The halls of Clark Student Center are filled with the almost incessant and overpowering stimuli posters, recruiting events, and bake sales. Almost every day there is a new bake sale raising money for any number of student clubs, but the bake sale outside Shawnee Theatre since April 22 is different. Son Tran, a line cook in the Mesquite Café, set up this bake sale to save his life.

“The idea came to me personally through my cooking,” said Tran. “It’s something I’m confident about.”

Tran said cooking is his specialty, and he feels confident in knowing he is good at it.

“I have to raise a total of $10,000 for all of the procedures,” Tran said. “To raise the money I’m working two jobs. Here during the week, and Jersey Mikes on the weekend.”

Tran said he has raised about $1,000 at the moment, and knows it is slowly rising to $10,000, but hopes that all this hard work will help him reach it.

“It must be hard for him, but he seems like a strong person,” said Mason Winter, criminal justice freshman.

Winter said even though he doesn’t know the guy, he thinks Tran is a strong individual with a good heart, and hopes that he is able to raise the money. He even said he has seen him riding his bike to school.

“Of what I know so far is, I have Lymphangioma Hematosis on the inside of my cheek and also I have extra bone growing in my bottom left jaw and it will continue to grow even after it encompasses my whole mouth. At one point it even grew past my gums, in turn cutting my tongue preventing me to eat or even talk without extreme pain,” Tran said. “I’ve had Lymphangioma Hemostasis my entire life.”

Tran said his biggest daily challenge is eating, but growing up he said the hardest part was being teased for the condition.

“Kids would ask me what’s wrong all the time, and I would tell them I was bit by a dragon because it got old answering the same question over and over again, and joking about it helps,” Tran said.

But students often recognize Tran working in the cafeteria, whether for his condition or his friendly attitude.

“I’ve seen him in the cafeteria before handing out the pizzas, and I’ve always wanted to know what was wrong, but I wasn’t about to ask him,” said Skylar Franks, education freshman.

She said living on campus she has noticed Tran in the café all the time, but didn’t want to ask him what kind of condition he was suffering because she said she didn’t want to seem rude, and because he probably got asked that question all the time.

The emotional part has been the worst for him. People constantly ask him what’s wrong with his lip, and he said sometimes he just doesn’t feel like talking about it.

“It cost about $50 to make everything on this table, however I make that much minimal every time I do this,” Tran said.

He said he had great success with the bake sale, selling cookies, pies, and brownies all ranging from $1 to $20, and said he will continue doing the bake sale as many days as he can.

“The surgery is dangerous and the chances of something bad happening are there, and I will have to continue receiving surgeries my entire life because the tumors will continue to grow,” Tran said. “I’m risking my life to save my life.”