SEATTLE — On Monday, we introduced you to five middle school girls from Maple Valley who are spending their holiday break rallying around their classmate, Ella Czarnowski.
Czarnowski has Leukemia and underwent a bone marrow transplant on Nov. 30. Five of her best friends invited KING 5 to document their music video shoot.
Roughly 24 hours after our first story aired, KING 5 had the honor of visiting her in her hospital room to capture the moment when she opened and viewed the thoughtful present from her classmates.
“Okay, let me know when I can play it,” said Czarnowski as she looked at the phone screen in her hand.
Then, a familiar face popped up on the display: one of her best friends. Her eyes lit up as her friend's voice came through the speakers saying, “We miss you so much and we hope that this will brighten your day.”
The five friends then broke out into song: “We walk in the streets and see the reindeer, those lights on the trees and everyone’s here.”
This Christmas season, hospital safety rules mean 11-year-old Czarnowski cannot have many visitors. For this reason, her five best friends decided to write and videotape a song for her instead.
“We’ll sing this together again and again,” sang the girls as Czarnowski watched intently. “Christmas is here, and Christmas will stay, and just like our friendship, it’ll never go away… we need you now, we need you now.”
The girls spent weeks practicing the song they had penned for the missing member of their girl group. One friend played piano and another performed it on guitar.
Czarnowski told KING 5, “I’ve known most of them for, since like first, second grade.”
Czarnowski was diagnosed with Leukemia two years ago.
“Sometimes we make dances too, like, take all together,” she said.
Czarnowski had some questions for them after the music video ended.
“Did you guys all write it? Or, who wrote it?” she asked her friends over video chat.
“We all added on,” they replied. “It was like so hard to keep it from you, though.”
Her father watched her with pride as she giggled with her friends.
“I definitely was surprised,” said Czarnowski. “I thought it was really sweet, too.”
This week, KING 5 was invited to sit in on the five friends’ video shoot.
“I know that the first thing that she’s gonna say is, 'Their outfits are cute!'” said one of the girls.
Czarnowski later shared her reaction with KING 5 to that portion of our interview,
“I thought that was really funny,” she said.
“Did you think their outfits were cute?” we asked.
“Yes,” she said, laughing. But it wasn’t the first thing she said. “I was just mentally happy.”
It has been a painful three weeks for Czarnowski, to say the least.
“It was really tough,” she said.
Still, she is aware that she is not the only one spending Christmas in a hospital bed. So, for others experiencing it, she had this advice to share: “Keep going. Keep fighting. And like, think in your mind that you're gonna get better."
She is already making plans for when she’s released.
She told her classmates over video chat, “When I get out of the hospital, we need to like assign [parts].”
“We can go tour!” one friend replied. “But we have to make a lot more songs.”
“Yeah,” said Czarnowski.
She later continued, “I just think in my head that I know that I’m going to get better and get out of here.”
Czarnowski said she is asking Santa for a pair of teal rollerblades for Christmas this year and hopes to hit the streets of Maple Valley with her best friends soon.