A LITTLE girl has joined forces with a local pub to help people with heart problems after a friend suffered a heart attack.

Nine-year-old Willow Williams, of Ledbury, has a diagnosis of autism and extreme anxiety but she also has a big heart to help others.

Willow, whose condition means she can't always go to school, met Lee Smith after she and her parents struck up a friendship with a group of people at the Talbot Hotel in Ledbury.

Her parents said: “When one member of this group, Lee Smith, aged 51, suffered two heart attacks, Willow was determined to do something to help her friend.

“Willow designed a ‘Cardiac Unit’ box and gathered the group to brainstorm ideas for a fundraising event to support the charity and the specialists who saved Lee’s life, twice.”

Willow and Helen, the landlady of The Talbot Inn, came up with the idea for an event at The Talbot on Sunday, July 21.

Willow hopes the event, ‘Have a Heart for Lee,’ will raise at least £1,000 for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Charity. 

Willow’s parents Lindsay and Ben Williams said: “The Talbot Hotel hosting the event will not only raise awareness of this worthwhile charity, it should help to push a vulnerable little girl’s confidence through the roof, by allowing her to think that she might succeed in making a difference and bring a community together for a good cause."

Willow said: “I thought it would be a good idea because it might raise enough money for the hospital and because I want them to make Lee and people like Lee better.

“I want people to have fun and donate money to the charity to help more people like Lee.”

Lee Smith, from Ledbury, coached and played competitive cricket for Eastnor CC and described how he fell ill last June after batting in a match initially brushing off a pain in his chest as indigestion.

He said: The pain grew more and more noticeable with a crushing pain moving down my left arm. I knew something was seriously wrong.”

Lee arrived at Hereford Hospital having a heart attack. He was blue-lighted to Worcester coronary unit where within 15 minutes he had a blockage removed and a stent fitted.

Lee said: “For the next four days I was cared for and looked after by the wonderful nurses and doctors to whom I owe my life and visited by my loving family and close friends.”

He said: “All was going well until on March 17, I woke up feeling under the weather, which progressed to having pains in my chest and arm, nearly losing consciousness. I was soon back in Hereford Hospital.

“I was transferred to Worcester for an angiogram where they found a second blockage and fitted a second stent.

“Again, my family and friends have been my rock.”

The plan is to have live music, pig roast, a host of family games and stalls and Willow’s parents are now appealing for more people to help.

They said: “For too long, Willow has felt like a failure for not being able to go to “normal school” and be like “normal children”, but in doing what she’s doing, we hope that she will realise she has so much to offer, just exactly the way she is.

“Thanks to The Talbot Hotel and to Gurney’s Butchers who are already going out of their way to assist Willow in her mission, we now have ‘Willow’s Warriors.’"

To help out, please email lindsaycooke74@gmail.com