When Kellan Hilson‘s mom told her someone would walk with her on the runway at Rally on the Runway, the 5-year old Okaloosa County girl wasn’t having it.
- “I don’t need you to walk on stage with me,” Kellan told her mother, Leianna Cooper. When Cooper explained it would be someone else escorting her, Kellan relented. “Oh, okay, well then that’s fine.”
It was a far cry from the nerves Kellan had been carrying in the days leading up to the event. She had told her teacher she didn’t think she could do it. But after a pampering day where she picked out her outfit — “totally her element,” Cooper said — something shifted. Kellan went from anxious to ready.
On the night of March 26, she led the show.
She was the first Rally Kid to walk the runway at Rally Gulf Coast’s 8th annual Rally on the Runway, held at the Brownsville Community Center in Pensacola. Pensacola Ice Flyers owner Greg Harris served as her celebrity escort. And she didn’t want to leave the stage.
- “She just felt extremely special, and that’s just what I desire for her,” Cooper said. “I just want her to be celebrated. I want her journey to be honored. I want her to know that she is incredibly brave, that she’s so special, and that what she’s gone through is more than just a battle.”
Kellan, who has been fighting leukemia since her diagnosis on April 16, 2024, was one of several Rally Kids featured at the event, which raised $729,290 for childhood cancer research and family support programs. Celebrity escorts also included Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons, WEAR-TV meteorologist Allen Strum and Miss University of South Alabama and two-time childhood cancer survivor Sydnee Cantley.
She wasn’t the only Okaloosa County child represented that night. Lita Danlag, mother of toddler Rupi Danlag, took the stage to speak on behalf of her daughter, who is battling an aggressive form of solid tumor cancer and is currently on a clinical trial…