Kimberly Del Angel
Staff Writer

Thirteen year-old Mabeth Diaz blows out the candles on his birthday cake another year. Upon first glance, one sees a typical boy laughing with friends, jumping into the pool and playing basketball. However, if one takes a closer look, one can see the right prosthetic leg he wears proudly thanks to Scottish Rites Hospital.

July 22, 2010 started out with a family outing for Diaz, but a four-wheeler accident quickly took a turn for the worse. When arriving at Scottish Rite Hospital he was quickly assisted by staff eager to make the incident easier for Diaz and his family. Together they were able to help them cope with the changes that would quickly be taking affect in their lives and ease into the transition.

It is the faces of children like Diaz that compose the image for this special hospital that has helped save many lives. New Tech High School@Coppell seniors Natalie Hudson and Christine Thomas decided to dedicate their Capstone Project (a project including the compilation of what seniors have learned through NTH) this year towards showing their appreciation for the hospital by holding a community wide event, Coppell Idol, April 1 to raise funds.

“As a patient myself, the staff at Scottish Rite is like a family to me,” Hudson said. “I wanted this project to benefit them because they do exceptional, quality work and I thought of it as a way to give back to the hospital that has done so much for me the past 17 years.”

With an idea at hand, Hudson and Thomas decided to take initiative towards completing the project by holding a citywide audition for elementary through high school children by video. They had an overwhelming response and received 48 submissions.

“Getting over 40 videos, was hard on our part—we were the ones who unfortunately had to judge; everyone was so talented,” Hudson said. “We spent over five hours just debating what we should do. We had tears almost running down our faces because we both have been in performing kind of sports and that kind of gives us an angle to look it from.”

Unsure as to how to approach elimination of the contestants they created three divisions for students to compete in, elementary, middle school and high school.

“We didn’t want to eliminate someone’s talent, so what we looked for was something unique that would stand out in every category; even the elementary kids were so talented so we looked for something that stood out to us that we thought would stand out to the community as well, but it was a hard process,” Thomas said.

After making the necessary cuts the pair went to work setting up the event and finding local sponsors while the contestants got to work practicing their performances.

“It was a lot of planning; we started this in September and October when we gathered our ideas, and we had capstone supervisors who helped us get the location—which is Coppell Middle School North—after finding the location we actually had to find sponsors to donate prizes, because we knew if we took money out of what we came in to give the prizes, there would barely be any outcome going into Scottish Rite,” Thomas said. “We want to have the audience engage in this event, and if we didn’t have any contestants to compete it wouldn’t’ be a success.”

As the doors and voting booths opened, people flooded into the CMSN cafeteria at 6:30 p.m. Folders lay across each table with the contestant’s photographs on them for all to see. A winner was chosen based on the amount of tickets he or she received in their folder by the end of their division’s voting period. When the entrance fee was paid the consumers received two tickets, and were given the opportunity to buy more tickets for $1.

A variety of students performed that night. Among them was Harper Gruzins: a fifth grader on the exterior, but a western country singer at heart.

“I feel really good [about participating in this event, because I’m a patient [at Scottish Rite] too, so they are raising money for me and everyone else to have good surgeries and stuff,” Gruzins said.

Gruzins’ love for music and passion for God has led her on a tremendous career at just the age of ten. Already she has recorded some singles, and performed at several locations in the Metroplex.

“I have a plan that I really want to go to Nashville and be a huge country western star, but whatever God calls my heart to do, and everything else that he really wants me to, I’ll do,” Gruzins said. “I have been really wanting to go to Africa and sing, but this year I’m going to Romania with my mom to sing to them, and teach them about God.”

The audience fell in love with the personalities that these children presented while on stage.

“I enjoyed the elementary children; they just had tremendous voices, from the smallest little girl,” Coppell resident Glo Gardner said. “They were all good and so accomplished on the piano, they had very good voices and they kept in key, which I thought was really impressive. I can just see these kids auditioning on American Idol one day—I truly can.”

Coppell Idol brought together many students with different backgrounds, but they all had one thing in common: their shared love for music.

“Singing to me is something that is a big part in my life,” Coppell High School senior Brian Boyce said. “I do musicals, I play in a band, I sing in the band and I’m going to college for Music Theater so it’s a big part of my life, and whenever I am upset it is something I do to vent out my anger or emotions.”

After the middle school performance elementary winners were announced; middle and high school winners were announced at the end of the night. The winners and the amount of tickets that they received are as followed:

Elementary—1st, Olivia Short (1,403); 2nd, Harper Gruzins (497)
Middle School—1st, Morgan Sedillo (844); 2nd, Madeline McGregor and Maya Wood (116)
High School—1st, Brian Boyce and Bailey Farell (1,147); 2nd, Rachel Swaldi , Anna Nudo and Tori Clift (229)

This project not only showed how much impact a community can do as a whole, but the difference one person, or two can make for the community.

“I worked with Natalie who is a patient at the hospital and she was involved with the Dallas White Rock marathon, she was one of our champion patients, and so she contacted us and wanted to get this event going and I basically just assisted her with the popcorn because that’s one of our traditions, but it was all her doing,” Scottish Rite’s Development officer Dorothy McGawn said. “It’s all about telling out patients stories and Natalie is one of our patients and she is really getting out there and spreading the word and being and ambassador for the hospital.”

A total amount of $3,357 was raised through this event and will be going in to the general funds at Scottish Rite. The impact that this event had on the community by both helping showcase the talent within it, and the generosity of it as a whole had a marvelous turn out.

“It is a fantastic learning tool, teaching tool for the children, and I think we can identify some real talent for the community,” Gardner said. “Tell them to keep it going on—it is fantastic. They are doing a fantastic job and kudos for that. And if there is anything else I can do to support them, I will.”

Check out photos from Coppell Idol below. Photos by Brian Hwu.