Girl Raises $27,000 for Friend at 4-H Auction in 'Small Act' That Went 'Way Bigger' (Exclusive)

When Holly Hargrave donated her lamb to help raise money for Lexi Anderson's heart transplant, an inspired crowd drove the bidding sky high

Last November, 12-year-old Lexi Anderson started feeling dizzy when she was playing basketball.

"We were running up and down the court and all of a sudden I just stopped," she recalls. "My eyes went black, and I couldn't see anything."

In Dec. 2023, Lexi was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a heart condition in which the muscle tissue in the heart's lower chambers becomes stiff, leading to reduced blood flow.

“The only cure is to have a heart transplant,” explains her mother, 45-year-old graphic designer Tamala Anderson. “She's a strong little girl. She has a true, kind heart. It's just broken.”

Lexi, who was placed on the transplant list on May 13, still goes to school, but she isn’t allowed to play in gym class or run. “She’s not allowed to be a kid,” her mother says. One activity in which Lexi can still participate: showing animals from her grandparent's Dairy Farm at 4-H livestock competitions near her home in Cumberland, Wisc.,

At the Barron County Fair last July, after judges did not select Lexi’s lamb to be one of the 25 sold at auction, Carla Hargrave suggested to her two daughters — 13-year-old Holly and 15-year-old Hattie — that they give one of their lambs to Lexi.

“We both instantly said yes at the same time,” says Hattie. The sisters, who live on a 600-acre farm in Spooner, Wisc., helping raise crops like corn and alfalfa, have been showing animals with 4-H since third grade. They picked Holly’s 154-lb. lamb because it was heavier, figuring it would raise more money.

"[Holly] said, 'I hope you get a heart transplant, and we want to give you the lamb money,'" Lexi remembers. “I was so happy. She really cares about me — I just love her.”

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Normally, a lamb at a similar auction would sell for $700 to $1,000. But the bidding took off when Lexi's lamb hit the block.

"I was in tears,” Tamala says. “People just kept bidding. They bid and they bid and they bid."

Lexi's lamb was bought, donated back and resold four times, raising more than $27,000.

“It was amazing to see how a small act of kindness growing to something way bigger than I could have imagined,” Holly tells PEOPLE.

The Hargrave family has had their share of health issues: 46-year-old Carla is a breast cancer survivor (she has been in remission for three years). Hattie had seizures when she was younger, and their brother has a prosthetic food due to a congenital condition. Holly herself was born with a cleft lip and palate.

“I’ve been through a lot of surgeries, and I know how important it is to have your friends and family come around and support you,” she says.

Echoes Carla: “It's hard dealing with all these medical things, and you always wonder why. "Why is this happening to us?' But now when you look back, it really has taught the kids to have compassion toward others and the importance of being there for each other and supporting each other and praying for each other. This has really spread through the community, how people have been supporting [the Andersons] and praying for them, too. Lexi has a hard road ahead of her, and just being able to help ease some of the financial burden to allow them to really concentrate on Lexi and her health has been really important.”

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Tamala says the entire community has come together to help and donate to her daughter's transplant fund at a website called "Love for Lexi."

“It shows how good the world still is,” she says. “I've been surrounded with pain. For people just to come together to show the love for my baby, and they don't even know her. They just want her to be okay. We are extremely grateful for everything that people are doing because it's one less worry that we have right now, and our worries are so, so extreme."

For more on Lexi and Holly — and other people across the country who’ve undertaken big acts of kindness — pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now, or subscribe.

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