Ariel Winter Slammed For Asking Fans To Donate To Her Cousin’s GoFundMe Campaign
Ariel Winter’s cousin was recently hospitalized for a mysterious illness, and the Modern Family star took to Twitter to share the GoFundMe page that was created by one of his friends.
According to The Daily Mail, Tino Tsutras was rushed to the hospital on April 5, and one of his pals decided to set up a $15,000 GoFundMe campaign to help cover his medical costs and living expenses. A few days later, Ariel shared the news on her Twitter page.
“This is my cousin Tino. If you can, please consider donating to his recovery fund. Anything helps. I love him so much,” she wrote alongside two broken heart emojis.
The page described Tino’s health woes, including a heartbreaking sequence of events that saw him falling ill and being put on life support in the ICU at a hospital in Atlanta before doctors diagnosed him with a condition linked to meningitis called Haemophilus influenzae. Tino’s friends’ efforts ended on a positive note, with the GoFundMe page raising over $18,000 in a single day.
However, some fans were not happy that the actress was asking her fans to donate to her cousin’s campaign, considering her A-list Hollywood status.
“Sorry for your cousin. But with your six figure salary per episode, you could max out that the 15k go fund me without feeling a thing. Strange thing to tweet, all things considered.”
Another one chimed in, “Why cant u pay that s*** for yourself since that is family and u get paid well.”
https://t.co/8Sx6R08RAr pic.twitter.com/mTLeEaE8vC
— Ariel Winter (@arielwinter1) April 9, 2019
Others came to Ariel’s defense, claiming that people are quick to assume that when a person is famous, their entire family is wealthy too — which is not always the case. The 21-year-old actress then took to Twitter to clap back at the bold followers who claimed she should be the one covering all of the expenses.
“What makes you think I’m not?” she wrote, adding that she absolutely wouldn’t want people who can’t donate to do so.
She later said that she was “shocked” at the amount of online hate she received after sharing her cousin’s campaign instead of “a simple, kind message showing him some love and support.”
“Nothing else needed to be done aside from that. I re-posted a gofundme that my cousin’s friend made just as anyone else would. Hurtful,” Ariel added.
The GoFundMe campaign also explained that Tito was now out of the ICU and doing much better, but was still under close monitoring.
