Each Hero: Meet Carson Domey, The One Who Never Let Anything Define Him
By: Nadely Requena, Each Mind
Picture this: it’s a regular Saturday morning. The wind is blowing through the slightly cracked window and just outside is the booming, industrial city of Boston, Massachusetts. As you sip from your favorite mug, you notice a crowd of people beginning to populate the streets below you in a passionate manner.
There you see that it’s an annual fundraising walk for Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Continuing to stroll between the parallel buildings, a particular group catches your attention with their piercing bright, yellow t-shirts. The words “Carson’s Crew: When Life Hands You Lemons, Make A Difference” are boldly printed across them. A little boy with a huge smile walks in the middle amidst hundreds of people.
That little boy is Carson Domey. When he was seven, he was diagnosed with a rare form of Crohn’s Disease, which is a life-long condition affecting the digestive system. “Carson’s Crew” was the name of the walk team they did for the Children’s Hospital every year and have raised about $150K over 5 years.
“I call it my Christmas every year,” Domey said. “So many people would come out, raise a ton of money for a great cause. You’d have a great day in Boston. We’d always luck out on the weather… favorite day of the year.”
In 2019, Carson’s Crew became a non-profit with the mission to make a difference in the lives of patients and families through innovative technology. Since then, Carson Domey has been able to advance telemedicine and mental health initiatives in Massachusetts; not only through this nonprofit, but also through his school board and government legislature.
Now, you may still be wondering: who is Carson Domey? Well, he grew up as an only child in a town about 40 minutes outside of Boston. His parents are both entrepreneurs and business-minded folk who he considers his “best friends in the whole wide world.” Domey also attended an all-boys private Catholic school and played hockey all his life. He would make history in 2019 at Saint John’s High School when he petitioned and succeeded at adding the suicide hotline number on the back of student’s ID cards. He also seems to have a fun, slight obsession with planes and all things aviation-related.
Another question to throw in the loop: how did Domey get involved with mental health advocacy? He was already heavily involved with the state legislature advocating for the expansion of telemedicine services, but mental health became his main focus after a traumatic occurrence during his first year in high school. Domey had just received the “Humanitarian of the Year” from Boston’s Children’s Hospital, an award that to this day he still gets a rush of happiness from. All that went away when two people he loved and cared about were suddenly no longer by his side.
“I went from the highest of highs…” Domey said. “To two weeks later my great grandfather passing away… and then shortly after that is when one of my closest friends passed away due to suicide, and it was sadly too common of a story where [it was] one of the happiest kids I knew… the kid whose smile lit up more anyone else’s. And then just like that, tragedy strikes.”
The next couple of months were extremely difficult for Domey as he struggled with the passing of his close friend dealing with prolonged grief and loss. He recalls how he was very lucky to have a great support system between his parents and friends during that rough period in his life that eventually motivated him to do the things he does now with mental health “in his honor”.
From leading the effort to add the suicide lifeline on student’s ID at his high school, to writing multiple articles about youth mental health, and collaborating with other nonprofits to contribute to the development of mental health resources, Domey has not only continued to make a name for himself, but has also not let the harsh realities of his world define him.
At the moment, Carson Domey is a first-year at the University of Texas at Austin double majoring in Government and Economics. His goal is to continue working with public policy to make a meaningful impact not just in Massachusetts, but all over the nation.
As Domey stated, “Government is a tool to change a lot of lives in a great way and I hope to continue to use it to make the world a better place. There’s certainly work to be done everywhere so it’s just a matter of where my story best fits to help move those kinds of things forward.”