A sister’s Christmas promise — and the Folsom gym that helped her keep it | Opinion
About two weeks ago, Folsom native Michaela Mayer was driving back to work from her lunch break when she suddenly hit a pole, causing a few thousand dollars worth of damage to her car.
Not a great situation, but driving mistakes can happen, right? Except, the reason Michaela hit the pole was that she quite literally could not see it.
The otherwise healthy 25-year-old (who was soon due to start a Ph.D. course at the University of the Pacific in occupational therapy) had inexplicably and completely lost vision in her right eye. Her underlying health problem was far more serious.
“I went into urgent care for vision loss, but by the end of that (day), I was told I had a brain tumor,” Michaela said.
“The next day, we find out that her tumor is the size of a fist, and it was … pushing on her brain stem,” said Michaela’s little sister, Taylor Mayer. “It was causing so much pressure that if she waited any longer, she would have … potentially had a stroke or a seizure.”
Taylor, 22, says she and her sister are extremely close, like “twins, but three years apart.”
“All she was talking about was how excited she was (for graduate school) and I didn’t want that dream to be ruined because of a setback like this,” Taylor said. So she started to hatch a plan.
The sisters are both coaches at the Folsom CrossFit gym, AnywhereFit, which has four locations across the Sacramento region. And it was while working out at that gym when Taylor got an idea.
Taylor wanted to surprise her big sister on Christmas morning with a GoFundMe fundraiser that would help pay for some of the damages to her car, and maybe help with some medical expenses in the meantime. So Taylor turned to their gym community for help — and blew away the $4,000 fundraising goal within the first 24 hours.
“I set it to $4,000 thinking, ‘OK, my sister is going to be able to pay off her damages, and then have at least a month or two worth of money that will be saved up,’” Taylor said. She reached out to the gym’s owner, Blair Morrison, and general manager Lauren Campbell, “and they were very much on board with it.”
“When something like this happens, it is all hands on deck,” Campbell said. “We started putting the emails out. (And) because we’re the gym family that we are, we can say, ‘Hey, one of our coaches is experiencing this situation,’ and people are like, ‘How much do you need me to give?’ So it has been phenomenal, phenomenal to watch that kind of love.”
On Dec. 14, Michaela underwent a craniotomy for the fist-sized tumor sitting against her brain stem, and a little over a week later, she was back at the gym. No, not to work out. (Not yet, anyway.) But rather to watch from the sidelines as her gym community came together to support her: At all four AnywhereFit locations on Monday, members did a special workout named in the beloved young coach’s honor, and members donated generously to the fundraiser in support of her.
“This gym is a family,” said their fellow coach and friend, Laura Pennington. “It was like, ‘OK, she needs our help’ and everybody came out.”
The Mayer sisters’ stretch goal is now $13,000, which will help pay for some of Michaela’s tuition and living costs as she deals with the aftermath of her diagnosis. As of the time of publication, they had raised a little under $12,000.
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The craniotomy was a success. Michaela’s fist-sized brain tumor was benign, and she now has a long scar on her scalp to prove it. But the otherwise healthy young woman will have to go back for monthly MRIs for the long, foreseeable future, and her vision is still completely gone in her right eye, though the Mayers are hopeful it will return. The University of Pacific has agreed to make learning accommodations, and the same day Michaela is scheduled to start graduate school on Jan. 5, she will also have her first post-surgery MRI scan.
“She gets tired from just walking around the neighborhood,” Taylor said. “But I think her determination, her wanting to go back (to school) and learn is gonna push her … even though it might take a while. She’s gonna make it happen.”
Michaela’s support system — her family, her neighbors in Folsom and her chosen family at AnywhereFit gyms — are a heartwarming reminder of a community pulling together to support one of its own. It’s also a tale of real sisterly love: A love that overcomes the surprising slings and arrows that life can throw, and even the unseen poles that appear without warning.
“It wasn’t easy seeing my sister strapped up to these tubes, having dreams in her head and just being in a lot of pain,” Taylor said. “I told her before she went into surgery, ‘Hey, don’t worry about anything. Don’t worry about money, don’t worry about school. I got you.’ I think it’s just part of being a sister. You want to lift each other up and do whatever you can to make each other’s dreams possible.”
This story was originally published December 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
