Tour de Tammany

As a karaoke entertainer set up music equipment for an outdoor concert Saturday, 4-year-old Mia Grace Waller clumsily dragged a seat to the middle of the grass and plopped down in anticipation.

She didn’t stay still long.

When the music finally blasted, Waller’s feet stomped, her arms flailed and head bobbed. Underneath a surgical mask covering her mouth and nose, she smiled.

“I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time,” said her mother Krystal Lala, who discovered earlier this year Waller had cancer. “Sometimes she has her good days and bad, and this is obviously one of her good days.”

Waller, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, on July 31, was just one recipient of a multi-purpose fundraiser Saturday hosted at the Tammany Trace Trailhead on Koop Drive off Louisiana Highway 59 in Mandeville.

Billed as Tour de Tammany, the fundraiser was anchored by two bike races, a 14- and 7-mile ride with more than 100 participants paying $20 to $30 to race.

Proceeds from this event will benefit the Kid’s Konnection Playground, the Mia Grace Leukemia Foundation and the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Reserves.

Missi Spinosa, lead singer for Witness, sung and emceed the event while people munched on jambalaya and red beans and rice. Children, meanwhile, got their face painted and touched alligators courtesy of the Sheriff’s Office alligator handler Howard McCrea.

The atmosphere was more like a festival than a bike race.

“It turned out nice,” Lisa Pratt Maddox, executive director of the Tammany Trace, said. “It was a beautiful day. The food was good. I did though hope for a better turnout. But we’re going to keep doing it, and the more we do it the better it will be.”

For Waller, the day was already the best it could be, her mother said.

After a few minutes of watching Spinosa sing, Waller “was going to tell her what song to sing. Then she decided she was going to sing it, too,” said Jason Lane, Waller’s soon-to-be stepfather.

Alongside her cousin Chevy Crockett, also 4, the duo waltzed up the stage ramp to fan applause and sung along to a handful of songs. They often, however, just let out a word or two, laughed or said, “Hi mama” during the middle of songs. Everyone laughed and snapped pictures.

Waller’s mother inched close to the stage and held up a digital camera to get a clear shot.

Lala was nervous but didn’t want to interrupt Waller’s fun, she said later.

“I’m usually the one always disinfecting everything. I won’t let anybody touch her and am always watching out for what she touches, but today she’s just so happy, I can’t do it,” she said.

Moments earlier Lala took off Waller’s surgical mask, and the girl decided to sing one more song.

“That is amazing,” Lala said. “I never thought she’d do it. She’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time.”