My wife Missy and I got married in Nov of 2016. We had dreamt about starting a family years prior. In early 2017, we moved from Manhattan Beach, CA. to Scottsdale, AZ. A couple months into our marriage it finally happened, we got a positive pregnancy test. Sadly, upon our first visit to the doctor, we discovered there was no heartbeat. We tried to contain our shock and sadness with positive thoughts and prayer. Months passed and we couldn’t get pregnant. We then started looking for medical procedure options. We started with three rounds of IUI, to no avail. From there we tried IVF. Four years, and four IVF procedures later, the only difference was that I had injected my wife with over hundred rounds of painful intramuscular shots and we had racked up over $100,000 Credit Card debt. We needed to accept the fact that maybe we weren’t going to be blessed with a child. We traveled to different states to try different doctors, nothing was working. Our marriage and faith in God was being put to the ultimate test. We started engaging in more support groups and asking for prayers. We had looked into adoption agencies and started that process and realized it was long and not guaranteed, especially on the timing we had hoped for. So, we said let’s try it one more time with our 3rd doctor in the Phoenix area. The rest is history. Penelope Ann Keller was born on Aug 11, 2021. We are so blessed that we were guided by faith and love.

From this experience I could only imagine how many other families are currently or and have been in our situation, yet don’t have the ability or resources to pay for the procedures. So I made a vow that I would make an effort to help. I searched online and came across many organizations that did just what I wanted to do. One stood out more than others and after speaking to the founder, Kara, I was more excited than ever to get started in raising money for the grants that Starfish offers.

Missy & Tom Keller