'The Response Was Far Beyond Anything I Expected'

SEATTLE - An injured soldier who received a hateful greeting card, is about to receive a much nicer greeting. Thousands of kind and thankful Christmas cards from people here in the Puget Sound area.

Kirby Wilbur, a talk show host on our sister station KVI, launched the Joshua Sparling Project a little over a week ago. This after Sparling, who was shot in Iraq and recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital, got a card that said "please die."

"The response was far beyond anything I expected," Wilbur says. He asked people to counter the hate mail and they did!

"We had schools, we had Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops, we had families."

Army veteran Donald Helsem collected 370 cards from his grandson's school in Tacoma.

"I think it'll touch him," says Helsem. "I think they'll be very appreciated."

Nearly 9,000 cards have come in. Most are being shipped to Walter Reed in Washington, DC. Wilbur will hand deliver the rest in person to Joshua and other injured soldiers, Friday.