Watch Emotional Moment Girl With Prosthetic Leg Gets An American Girl Doll Just Like Her [Viral Video]

Emma Bennett, 10, a young Texas girl with prosthetic leg, just received the dream gift of a lifetime. She was given an American Girl doll with the exact same prosthetic limb, drawing a strong emotional response from the young girl.

In the video, her little sister hands Emma a box, saying she had to read the letter first, adding, “You’re gonna love it.”

Emma opens the letter and starts reading, and cannot wait to look further into the box. What she finds there makes her day in the most special way. Lying in the box was the American Girl doll, fitted with a tiny prosthetic leg.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Emma said, as she cried and hugged the doll tightly. “It’s got a leg like me! I love you!”

Don’t mind me, I’m just casually crying over here >> “Overjoyed girl beams at doll with matching prosthetic leg” https://t.co/C6Uf3nYm1e

— Candra Johnson (@candratweets) June 3, 2016

It turns out Emma’s mom, Courtney Fletcher Bennett, had bought the doll and sent it to the Long Island-based company A Step Ahead Prosthetics. While the company normally focuses on working with humans, the mom’s story moved them and they fitted the American Girl doll with a special, tiny prosthetic leg.

As reported by KHOU, the company explained in their letter to Emma, “After she arrived, she was given a room to stay while her new leg was being made in her favorite color pink.

“After a few weeks of training, she is ready to go home and lead a life without limitations with you.”

Emma is now thrilled after realizing that a doll could be just like her, and the video of Emma opening her gift has received more than 13 million views in just a couple days.

New York Daily News spoke to Amy Palmiero-Winters, director of operations at A Step Ahead Prosthetics. Palmiero-Winters said that it is important in a case like Emma’s to see someone else like you, even if it is only a doll.

“It’s just amazing,” Palmiero-Winters said, adding, “You don’t feel so alone.”

This little girl sobbed with joy after getting a doll with a matching prosthetic leg https://t.co/TiS6vKFBli pic.twitter.com/Rfsy6wHULz

— Daily Mail Femail (@Femail) June 3, 2016

According to Jessica Terranova, who works in the company’s legal affairs department, when staff watched the video of Emma opening her gift, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

“Everybody was crying, they were so moved,” Terranova said. “We work very hard. It makes it all worthwhile.”

According to the company, the prosthetic used on the doll was custom-made and hand-painted, just like the prosthetic limbs they make for human patients. However, it is apparently not the first time they have worked with a doll. Reportedly, the idea came from the fact that the company’s founder, Erik Schaffer, has three daughters himself.

Just because Emma now has her doll doesn’t mean that everything is done and finished, however, as A Step Ahead plans to offer Emma and her family a visit to their Long Island headquarters, where Emma can go through the process that created her new doll.

According to Palmiero-Winters, there are a lot of other young children at their facility and this would give Emma a chance to meet kids in the same situation as her.

Right at the end of the video, included below, Emma can be heard directly addressing the company that had made it all possible, thanking them from the bottom of her heart.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for making a doll like me.”

As reported by Eyewitness News, Emma was born with a rare birth defect that required her leg to be amputated when she was only 9 months old. Three months after the operation, she was fitted with a prosthetic leg and started to learn how to walk.

Now Emma is 10, she plays sports and is even on the cheer squad at school. Her mother said that despite the fact that she has a prosthetic leg, Emma “doesn’t skip a beat.”

However, despite that positive attitude, Emma had always said she would like a doll that looked like her. Her wish has now come true.

Watch the moving scene in the video below. It’s probably a good idea to have a box of tissues handy.

[Photo via Flickr by Anders Ruff Custom Designs, cropped and resized/CC BY-ND 2.0]