Teen hits all the right notes

Associated Press

HAMILTON

Creating a worldwide sensation music video that is sweet, compassionate but still loaded with an inspiring, tuneful message about courage would be a tough order for any adult.

But Hamilton’s 14-year-old Erika Scott makes it look easy.

Though the Hamilton Freshman School student is a tad shy off camera, her passion for helping others has her shining bright as she performs her hit song “Brave” to an increasingly global audience on YouTube and other internet venues.

And she is no stranger to the spotlight, having already drawn wide attention as the lone female player on Hamilton West Side Little League’s regional champion in the national Little League World Series tournament and three state championship teams.

For a young teenager, Erika already has an impressive resume most adults would envy.

At age 4 she was featured on ESPN TV for throwing a strike at a Cincinnati Reds game.

She played piano at age 5 and then tackled the guitar and trumpet.

And she just finished her first music album, on which “Brave” is one of the tracks, with the help of a high-profile Los Angeles music producer. The proceeds are going to The Young and Brave Foundation, which fights youth cancer.

It’s easy to be dazzled by the talents radiating off this Renaissance teen, but don’t let it distract you from her amazing heart.

It beats as her passion source and powers her desire not for fame but to help those who suffer.

Her close friend Kyleigh Wright died last year from a rare neurological disease, and in typical fashion, Erika decided to turn tragedy into a triumph of altruism.

“I wanted to find a way to help people,” Erika said of the video, which features local children and teen survivors of Chiari Malformation Type I, a neurological disease, many of them treated at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center in Liberty Township, which features a Neurosurgery Fitzpatrick Chiari Research Foundation where donations can be made.

The professionally produced video, which includes scenes from Liberty Center’s elevated garden, patients at Children’s and other Butler County locations, highlights Erika’s strong lyrics urging those in the throes of illness to remain brave.

“I wanted people to see the [Chiari] patients with the [surgical] scars on their necks to see how it [treatment] helped them,” she said.

Erika sings her song, dances with others and playfully has paint poured on her head because painting is a connective touchstone with many of the young Chiari patients she has befriended at Children’s.

“They really enjoy painting, so I thought painting should be a theme in the video,” she said.

St. Xavier High School sophomore Jake Fitzpatrick is a Chiari survivor in a most extraordinary way.

Diagnosed when he was younger, doctors said he’d never be able to play sports.

It makes his recently completed season as a junior varsity cornerback on St. Xavier’s heralded football team all the more satisfying.

Jake and Erika are friends. And making the video with her, said Jake, was “a very fun experience” but also “a way to do stuff for charity, get things done and defeat the disease.”