A 12-year-old Chicago girl who talked to singer Taylor Swift about music, touring and disease and served as an honorary police officer, has died after a battle with cancer, her family said on Tuesday.
The mother of Emily Beazley posted a message about the girl’s passing late on Monday on her Facebook page.
“My beautiful Emily got to use her angel wings,” Nadia Beazley wrote. “She fought hard to the end. Her last gift to me was passing peacefully.”
Emily was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was eight. She went into remission, but the aggressive form of cancer returned. The family decided earlier this year to stop chemotherapy once doctors said the treatments wouldn’t help.
The girl’s supporters, known affectionately as “Emily’s Entourage”, won an effort to have the street her family lives on named in Emily Beazley’s honour. The city honoured Emily with a Chicago skyline lit up in purple and green.
Friends and family appealed for a call from Swift via social media to call Emily, including a video with about 200 children singing and dancing to Swift songs.
Emily’s mother, Nadia Beazley, says her daughter had “the biggest smile” and “jumped up and down” after the Grammy Award winner’s call.
She says Swift’s manager offered the family tickets and a chance to meet the singer at her Detroit concert on May 30.
Swift announced in April that her mother has cancer.
Throughout Beazley’s ordeal, the girl who had ambitions of being a pediatric oncology nurse, was hopeful.
“You’ve got to stay strong and you’ve got to stay positive, no matter what happens,” she recently told a crowd outside Chicago police headquarters.
The family is asking for privacy, though a public memorial is being planned, the mother said in the Facebook post.
