Statue stolen from Make-A-Wish Foundation replaced in emotional ceremony

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz - The statue of an eight-year-old boy who inspired the Make-A-Wish Foundation was stolen and sold for scrap in Phoenix last year. 

On Tuesday, it was finally replaced during an emotional unveiling.

This new statue will be safe inside their Scottsdale location now. 

"He was my little man. My little cop. He really was," Linda Pauling said. 

Pauling was the mother of Chris, the eight-year-old who the statue was modeled after.

For her and many others, it is far more than a statue of bronze.

The statue is of a young man who lost a battle with leukemia.

How did Chris' story inspire the Make-A-Wish Foundation?

"It just means so much to me to have him back and share him with the world," Pauling said. "Chris’s last wish before he died [was] to be a DPS trooper."

In 1980, DPS made it happen with a special uniform and hat.

The wish granted became the inspiration for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, granting hundreds of thousands of wishes for critically ill children.

What happened to the statue?

Chris’s statue welcomed visitors to their Phoenix office for years until the theft, which surveillance video captured. 

Still, Linda was devastated.

"My God, when I buried him the first time, it’s almost like the second time he’s gone," she said.

Police recovered the scraps a week later and made an arrest. Now everything has changed.

"Woah, yes!" Pauling exclaimed. "So excited." 

How was the statue replaced?

Insurance came through, a donor who supplied all the bronze and the original artist have been hard at work duplicating the sculpture.

Now the new statue will welcome visitors at the Scottsdale location next to Chris’s Corner telling his powerful story to all who enter.

"We have him back. We have his statue back. The real one up there, I’ll be with him someday," Chris' mom said.

The scrap that Phoenix Police recovered has been held on to for evidence.

Linda hopes they’ll get it back at some point and hopes to melt it down into a plaque telling the statue's history.