In 2018, retired NYPD Sgt. Damian Muniz and his wife, Gracie, left behind their Manhattan brownstone and the colorful clamor of East Harlem for the wide skies of Nocatee.
New York had given them a beautiful life — abundant family, a sense of history on every block — but they longed for something different for their only child, Mila.
They wanted community. They wanted safety. They wanted her to grow up with the kind of freedom that meant riding bikes until dusk and scampering down cul-de-sacs with her friends.
Florida delivered. Mila thrived in her new home, darting between musical theater rehearsals, flag football practices, and any other pursuit her curious soul desired.
Cheerleading, though, became her passion. She adored the camaraderie, the glitter of game-night rituals, the bows, the belonging. She spent her sixth and seventh grades on Palm Valley Academy’s sideline cheer squad, proudly holding her place in the lineup.
Then, in March of this year, a coach asked for a quick word with her mother.
Only minutes into an informal practice that day, something was wrong. Mila couldn’t hold a plank. Her left side buckled during squats. The coach reassured Gracie that sometimes kids just tire easily or catch a virus. But the maternal instinct trembled, if ever so slightly.
That afternoon they drove to urgent care, then to Baptist South. The tests looked ordinary. A doctor suggested “frozen shoulder,” a diagnosis rarely seen in children.
Gracie pressed for more. “I want an MRI,” she insisted, and the family trekked to Wolfson Children’s Hospital at 2 a.m.
After a grueling 12-hour wait in the emergency room, the results carved their lives into a before and an after: a tumor, deep in the brain, in the most central and vital place. Inoperable.
A neuro-oncologist barely looked at Mila before delivering the words no parent should hear. Radiation, clinical trials, maybe. But surgery was impossible. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said with a shrug.
“Are you sending my child home to die?” Gracie asked as her heart quaked. The silence was its own answer.
“I just came home and started screaming, crying,” she recalled. “You don’t know what to do.”
But the Munizes refused to let despair harden into immobility. Within a week, they were on their way to Boston Children’s Hospital for another assessment after friends mobilized to help them vet every option available.
There, doctors performed a risky biopsy. Mila emerged unable to see and unable to walk. Slowly, she clawed back strength. Then came seven weeks of radiation, every single day.
The side effects were punishing: her legs swelled, her body gained 40 pounds in a single week, deep stretch marks tore across her skin. For three weeks, she was hospitalized, her parents living in a nearby apartment, trying to hold their lives together with phone calls and prayer.
By the end of her treatment, pathology revealed an aperture of hope: a clinical trial for an oral medication.
The family signed immediately. Now, every other week, they travel for scans and follow-ups. Her most recent MRI shows the radiation is still working, the drug still keeping the tumor at bay. But doctors maintain a balance of encouragement and realism.
And yet, hope persists. Just weeks ago, the FDA approved a new drug that could eventually combat Mila’s tumor type with more research.
The family travels regularly to Columbus Ohio for an oral medication that has slowed the cancer, their lives now a draining carousel of hotel rooms and hospitals.
Today, she has been stripped of much of her independence. Her gait is unsteady, her vision unreliable, and her body transformed in ways that make her shy away from the clothes she once loved. Still, her cheer squad hasn’t let her slip away. They named her captain, weaving her into every practice and celebration.
Mila also receives costly physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, feeding therapy, and massages while attending school. Administrators had agreed to give Mila a shortened schedule but she declined.
The Munizes were also forced to abandon their thriving transportation business to make time for their daughter. They toggle between despair and determination.
Not long ago, Gracie resolved to attend a relative’s wedding. Damian urged her to go, to experience something beyond the grind of worry and fear. The bags were packed, the ticket booked.
“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I just couldn’t leave her, even for that period.”
The luggage was quietly emptied, the clothes returned to her closet, and the painful routine resumed.
At home, Mila’s questions cut deepest.
“Why me? What did I do wrong? Why am I not like the other kids?” she presses. Her parents search for words, knowing there are no magical answers.
“She’s still here, still fighting,” Gracie said. “And we will fight for her with everything we have.”
Since her daughter’s diagnosis, Gracie has leaned on her community, and the kindness of strangers. That support is now growing through a new effort to help ease the family’s burden.
Local entrepreneur Elizabeth Meyers, who recently met Gracie and heard Mila’s story, is launching North Florida Influencers, a membership-based network for business leaders.
To mark the launch, Meyers is hosting a fundraiser on Oct. 3, 2025, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Private 131 in Jacksonville Beach. The evening will feature cocktails, appetizers, live music, and networking, with proceeds — including raffle donations and a portion of membership sales — going directly to the Muniz family.
“It’s about bringing people together to do good,” Meyers told The Citizen. “Mila’s story touched me so deeply, and this event is one small way we can show the Muniz they are not alone.”
Faith carries them when strength falters. Friends bring meals, teammates bring joy, and the Munizes hold on to the promise of one more day, one more laugh, one more memory.
Because for Mila, and for her parents, tomorrow is everything.
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