Nov. 10, 2026

As his mother, Mashala McCoy, said it best, Declan McCoy was “all boy.”

“Always outside, always playing in the mud, always playing with his dirt bike,” Mashala said. “He was a very active little boy.”

Declan’s candle burned bright, but the 7-year-old was robbed of his life. In June 2023, he died after a one-year battle with cancer.

Declan’s family was packing for a Florida vacation a year earlier, where Declan was getting ready to put all that energy into use, when his eye started hurting. Declan would get styes now and then, so Mashala thought that’s all it was and proceeded to take her dogs to the kennel. When she returned home, one whole side of Declan’s face was drooping.

A CT scan at Pikeville Medical Center revealed a mass in his nasal cavity. Declan had rhabdomyosarcoma, a small but fast-growing cancer that forms in skeletal muscle tissue.

“I go back and look at pictures and ask myself, ‘What did I miss?’ Like, what was I not seeing,” Mashala said. “Face was perfect, laughing, happy.”

It’s that joyful spirit that Mashala and her husband, Josh, want to restore for others facing a similar battle as their little boy. Declan underwent brutal radiation and chemotherapy, the latter of which required blood transfusions to combat the necessary but toxic treatments.

Mashala estimates that Declan received between 20 to 30 transfusions in his one-year fight. The use of donated blood is a common, albeit overlooked, part of many cancer patients’ treatment plans. A quarter of all blood collected goes to cancer patients.

“You don’t realize how much they need,” Mashala said. “You don’t even think about it. I never thought about it. I mean, yeah, I donated blood a couple times before, but it just never hit me how much cancer patients had to have.”

Mashala and Josh have organized blood drives in recent years in Eastern Kentucky to make sure those facing similar circumstances never have to think about the availability of blood. It’s the last thing a family, who is already dealing with so much, should have to deal with, they believe.

“Until you’re doing it every single day, every step of the way, you don’t realize all they go through,” Mashala said. “I just wanted to do try to do something to help, and also to keep his memory alive at the same time.”

The blood drives in and around Pikeville in memory of Declan are always well-attended.  

“It makes me happy,” Mashala said. “I’m always afraid people won’t show up, and they do.”

Donations at the Kentucky Blood Center drives stay in Kentucky to support patients at more than 70 local hospitals. It’s exactly the kind of act that Declan would have wanted.

“He always wanted to help other people,” Mashala said. “He was a great boy.”