Detroit — Someone at Mercy High School in Farmington Hills is painting the town pink, and the evidence is all over the Internet.
That someone is junior Erin Pienta, a young lady with the ambition to pursue a career in art, but who used her creativity this fall to help raise awareness of breast cancer.
Pienta created a music video called the “Mercy Pink Glove Dance,” which involves virtually everybody at the all-girls high school. Thus far, it’s been a hit.
“The only way to engage people my age is with something they can interact with,” says Pienta about the video, which has garnered 25,000-plus views on YouTube.
“My family has been touched by cancer several different times,” says Pienta, whose parents both work in the medical field — her dad being a cancer specialist at University of Michigan’s hospital. “It’s such an important issue for young people to be involved in.”
Pienta, 17, got the idea from watching a similar video made by the staff of St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Ore. She already knew firsthand the way cancer could affect a family. Her own brother, at age 19, was diagnosed with sarcoma. Plus, her parents dealt often with patients battling cancers.
Since Mercy already has a fundraiser to contribute to breast cancer research, Pienta envisioned getting the entire school involved.
The video was shot during October, breast cancer awareness month, and posted in early November. Shortly thereafter, it was featured in local media, including WJR (760 AM), the Farmington Observer — which ran a column penned by Pienta — and the Detroit News.
With a mix of popular music thumping in the background, the video features students dancing while modeling pink gloves — pink being the color now recognized nationally to symbolize breast cancer awareness.
The school’s staff gets into the action, as well, with teachers striking various poses, oftentimes humorous.
“I knew it would be a success here at Mercy and that everybody would enjoy it,” says English teacher Lynn Waldsmith. “But I had no idea it would be this watched and this celebrated. That was a surprise — a very pleasant surprise.”
It was for Waldsmith’s newspaper class that Pienta came up with the video concept, which was meant to help ring in a new student newspaper website in January. She approached Waldsmith and also received a blessing from the school administration to record students, teachers and staff members dancing and donning pink gloves.
She recorded the shots over a week’s time. The entire student body was even ushered into the gym at the end of a school day to perform some moves for the video.
Shooting the video was fun, said Pienta — who especially enjoyed the rivalry it created between faculty members as to which department would have the best segment in the video — but the most important part, the student says, is the cause for which the video was made.
“What’s most gratifying to me is the fact that it could make a change in someone’s life,” Pienta says. “If even one person saw it and went to get an early screening for breast cancer — that’s the best thing, because the best way of prevention is early screening.”
