Young, tough, and inspiring — the teenagers who beat the odds to help others
They’ve survived cancer, hardship and loss but they are using their private pain to drive them to help others. This Christmas we celebrate real-life teen angels.
NSW
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Repeatedly beating cancer, recovering from a sudden heart attack or surviving a catastrophic car crash would be enough of an achievement for any teenager.
But these extraordinary kids have not just lived through challenges that would be overwhelming to most — they have thrived.
And as they recovered, they turned their energies to helping others.
Meet the teen angels who are making a difference to others.
MIA BRUCE, 13, OF REVESBY
At just 13, Mia Bruce knows all too well how overwhelming the first days of cancer treatment can be.
Diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma in August 2021, she found chemotherapy scary and painful.
Mia spent more than 200 daunting nights at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick and the Picnic Point High school student wrapped her own experience as a gift to others who followed her.
Kindness and compassion became her focus when she saw newly diagnosed kids just like her come onto the ward, so she started leaving handwritten notes on the bed of other patients going through the same journey.
“My time in the hospital was very long and most the time it was quite hard,” Mia says.
“I wanted to help others because when I first got diagnosed, and when I first went to Randwick, it was very quiet, dark and lonely.
“I felt very scared, and when the new kids would come in, I wanted to create an open space so they could come in and talk and ask questions of me and so they wouldn’t feel the way I felt when I came in.
“I was terrified and scared, to be honest, and had no idea what was ahead.
“I wanted to let them know they were not alone and that we are all doing it together and to take each day at a time.”
Mia recalls friends she made on the ward, some of whom tragically didn’t survive.
One of her first notes was to Chloe, who was slightly older than Mia when her treatment started.
“She had all her curtains closed and she was very quiet and shy, and I wrote her a note, saying, ‘you’ve got this, you are not alone, we are all in this together’, and I left my phone number saying, ‘if you ever want to reach out, just message me’, and she did,” says Mia.
“My friend Olivia was 17 and she came in at a similar time after Chloe. She was very nervous and she was asking questions about how I felt with this and that, and I was just talking to her and we had to leave, so I left her a note too.”
Mia’s mother Mary Bruce said her daughter was a support to some of her dear friends in their own final days.
“She lost two friends during the process,” says Mrs Bruce says. “One girl was 19 when she passed and Mia messaged her every single day right up until she passed.
“I thought, ‘are you OK, it was very heavy’, but she said, ‘no mum, I can’t not support her and can’t have her feeling alone’.
“She came from the country, she never made it out of hospital. She had leukaemia.”
Through tears, Mia says: “I hopefully made a difference”.
Her mum says the experience changed Mia.
“She did say, ‘Mum, this is awful but I’m glad it has happened because it is going to make me a better person’,” Mrs Bruce says.
MOLLY CROFT, 16, OF DUBBO
Diagnosed with osteosarcoma at age 12, Molly Croft, from Dubbo, was a keen netballer when doctors discovered she had a tumour the size of a tennis ball in her tibia that had spread to her lung.
It was the beginning of a hard slog of surgery and treatment. Molly had most of the bone in her right leg removed and a prosthetic put in, but suffered recurrent infections. The cancer also returned in her lungs last year.
Molly has spent extended periods at Ronald McDonald House at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and considers it her second home.
She had the prosthetic replaced last year, but during all that time off her feet she managed to raise an extraordinary amount of money for both Ronald McDonald House and cancer research.
Leaving Sydney after her treatment, she felt she was “leaving part of me behind, the people who had become my family and I honestly wanted to do everything I can”.
Molly set out to “pay it forward” for other families like hers, and to also create awareness about her type of cancer.
“I know I’m one of the lucky ones because this cancer kills more 15 to 24-year-olds than any other type,” she said.
“Not many of the friends I’ve made on this journey are still here, so that is a big reason as well.”
Molly’s proud mum Angela Croft said it was just a couple of days before her daughter had “smashed” her initial fundraising goal of covering 100 nights of the $160/per night cost for a family to stay at Ronald McDonald House.
“Then she said, ‘I’ll raise 292 nights’, which is how long we stayed. She smashed that in another few days through their pay-it-forward page. She said she wanted to pay it forward for families she was leaving behind, but she raised over $190,000 for Ronald McDonald House.
“She said ‘I feel like I can make a difference, Mum’,” Mrs Croft said.
Then Molly teamed up with Diamonds squad member Amy Parmenter, who lost her mum Gilly to mesothelioma when she was 15. They created the Tie Dye Project, making tie-dyed netball bibs, T-shirts and socks to raise money for cancer research.
“I have raised about $400,000, but with the Tie Dye Project, that has raised about another $100,000 this year,” says Molly.
“All of that money goes to places that need it the most.
“I’m lucky I have the gift to speak and share my story, and a lot of the stuff I do now is for research projects and I know they won’t necessarily help me but will help so many kids down the track.”
Molly said she “had to grow up very fast”.
“My doctors told me everything, you know all the bad stuff, and you have a lot of thoughts going around in your head,” she says.
“But it gives me something else to focus on, the fundraising and the awareness, it gives a positive outlook that I am able to make a difference.”
Mrs Croft said Molly is “far from out of the woods”.
“But she lives life, she doesn’t have a care in the world, and as long as she is making better for the next child that comes along she is happy.”
“One of the boys she looked up to was 24 and he relapsed in August and he’s gone.
“It is a terrible cancer and this is Molly’s way of dealing with it.”
AHMAD EL HAJ YOUSSEF, 16, OF GREENACRE
In hospital for minor surgery last year, Ahmad El Haj Youssef went into cardiac arrest while in the operating theatre. Unknown at the time, Ahmad had cardiomyopathy, or heart failure. He came very close to death and after an agonising wait, a heart transplant gave him a second shot at life.
Ahmad also lost his leg due the clotting caused by being on life support.
After five months in hospital, Ahmad had to learn to walk again, and walk with a prosthetic. He then walked in a charity event, but his inspiring spirit also saw him tryout for wheelchair AFL for NSW.
“It has been hard, but it has been me having a positive mindset toward everything and waking up to a different life now,” said the Year 11 student from Malek Fahd Islamic school.
“I went in for three days and had a five-month trip to hospital.
“In the darkest days I had a positive mindset and kept saying to myself even when the dark comes, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how hard it gets.
“It was hard to learn to walk, but the progress I have made is beautiful.”
The sport-mad teen could have let his disability stop his passion for all things footy, but he tried out for wheelchair AFL and made the NSW team, playing in the national championships this year.
Now he hopes to become a Paralympian in a team sport such as basketball.
“I started going to the tryout in Wollongong and it started the journey for me toward the sport,” he says.
“I played for NSW and it was fun. I would love to play any sort of sport. I loved it before and after.”
His mum Souha Maskaleh said: “His attitude is what has got him this far, he is literally back from the dead.
“He is such an inspiration and he wants to help people like him”.
Ahmad says: “At some point in your life there will be your darkest time and you have to stay in a positive state and not let anyone bring you down.”
TIAHNI PADDISON, 18, OF GROSE VALE
Talented Latin and ballroom dancer Tiahni Paddison had a catastrophic collision with a truck in May last year which left her trapped in the car with a severe brain injury.
Paramedics Inspector Emily Stevens and Gabby Edwards were first on the scene, and climbed in the wreck with the then-Year 12 student from Colo High to keep her alive until she could be cut out, which took over an hour.
“It was pitch black and Tiahni was trapped and she was in a critical condition, one of the most serious car accidents I’ve been to in 10 years, with an obvious brain injury,” Insp Steven’s said.
Tiahni was placed in an induced coma while her parents Kali and Michael faced the real possibility she might not make it.
“She suffered a severe brain injury and she was like a sleeping angel for a long time,” Mrs Paddison said.
Her recovery stretched over months.
“Tiahni has just defied all odds,” Mrs Paddison said.
Tiahni had to relearn almost every aspect of her day-to-day life, including how to eat, and she applied her spirit to learning to walk again despite her injuries.
“Why not? Why would I want to be stuck in a wheelchair. Do better be better,” she said.
Mrs Paddison said: “That has always been Tiahni’s motto, ‘do better be better’”.
Tiahni also managed to obtain her HSC for 2021 despite spending the second half of the year in hospital and in rehabilitation.
“She had completed enough to be able to receive her HSC and she had done so well prior so she was able to be issued her HSC,” Mrs Paddison said of her daughter’s results.
”She deserved it, she had done 13 years of school and just missed that last exam.”
Tiahni is now back learning dancing at the Performing Arts Western Sydney.
“We were really pleased to meet up with the paramedics, they didn’t know if Tiahni survived, it was lovely to meet and thank them,” Mrs Paddison said.
SISTERS ANHAAR, 15, AND SALMA KAREEM, 13, OF STRATHFIELD
Helping to give voice to other children in her community, Anhaar Kareem, 15, uses her spare time to run free public speaking and creative writing workshops during school holidays to offer young people a way to speak out on issues that matter to them.
She also recently founded the Islamic Women’s Welfare Association Youth Subcommittee.
“I do tutoring, because I‘m really interested in creative writing, debating and public speaking myself,” Anhaar says.
“But then I thought that I could make tutoring more accessible to people that might not be able to access it because it is difficult financially.
“So I thought that it would be good to try and have that as a free option for families that often can’t do tutoring.”
With a focus on helping families from different cultures, Anhaar devotes a block of time each school holidays to supporting her community.
“I thought those skills were really important for people to be able to share their opinion, to be able to do well in school, but also for families with cultural and linguistically diverse,” she says.
“It’s good to be able to have the services of things like writing, public speaking and debating to settle in with things like school.”
Not to be outdone by her big sister, 13-year-old Salma has been a volunteer at the Islamic Women‘s Welfare Association for five years and volunteers her time to cook for and feed people who are homeless.
A keen baker, Salma started her own online sweets, dessert business called Brookie Queen, and donates 10 per cent of her profits to charities like Starlight Children’s Foundation. She turns over about $300 a month.
“Yes, 10 per cent goes to charities. So I’ve done, like, Red Nose and lots of other charities. And I have raised over $1000 to different charities,” she says of her creations.
“And I cook food for homeless people. I also like the volunteering, like the Brothers in Need is usually every Saturday or every second Saturday.
“We go in and cook and they go to the city and hand out food to the homeless people,” Salma said of the charity.
Mum Kareema Kadous said: “We are extremely proud of the girls as giving back to the community and helping others is very important to us as a family.”
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