Inspirational Lacey Parker Makes Cheerleading Squad

“You’re a cheerleader!”

Those are the words of a family member that you can hear in the background of a heartwarming video gone viral of a 10-year-old Louisiana girl with Downs Syndrome learning that she had made her middle school cheerleading squad.

In May, Renee Parker posted a video on Facebook of her daughter, Lacey, reacting to making the cheerleading team for North DeSoto Middle School in Stonewall, La.

In the video, Lacey, who has Downs Syndrome, is looking at an iPad and scrolling through a roster of numbers belonging to cheerleaders who made the final cut. When she sees her number 28, she looks up quietly and says, “I made it.”

When that reality sinks in a half second later, she begins jumping up and down shouting “I made it!”

The priceless 40-second Facebook video has been viewed more than 35 million times and Lacey’s story was featured in a CNN series going behind videos gone viral.

[facebook url=”https://www.facebook.com/renee.parker.56829/videos/10152903749853099/”]

“I just never imagined that, you know, her reaching her dream would impact so many people,” Renee Parker told CNN.

According to Renee Parker, Lacey was also born with Tetralogy of Fallot, a rare condition caused by a combination of four heart defects.

These defects, which affect the structure of the heart, cause oxygen-poor blood to flow out of the heart and to the rest of the body. Infants with Tetralogy of Fallot, also known as Blue Baby Syndrome, usually have blue-tinged skin because their blood doesn’t carry enough oxygen.

Originally given 10 days to live, Lacey and her family were provided hope by Dr. Steven Leonard, who recommended a complicated surgery but one that provided a 40-percent chance of survival.

Renee Parker told CNN that when Lacey was six months old, she underwent the six-hour procedure at Dallas Children’s Medical Center and was miraculously cured of the Tetralogy of Fallot.

Renee Parker told CNN: “The doctor just looked at us and he said, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, other than everything I touched, God touched first.’”

Having defied odds from infancy, it should come as little surprise that Lacey has done so as a cheerleader, following in the footsteps of her older sisters who were also on the North DeSoto Middle School squad.

“If I put limitations on her then so does society,” Renee Parker told CNN. “Down syndrome is a label. It’s not who she is… It’s not what she can become.”

And what exactly does Lacey want to become?

“I want to be a good cheerleader for all my friends,” she told CNN.