12-Year-Old Taylor Swift Super Fan Dies

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 Tuesday as reported by Mashable.

The mother of Emily Beazley posted a message about the girl’s passing late 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 8. 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.

Beazley’s supporters, known affectionately as “Emily’s Entourage,” won an effort to have the street her family lives on named in Emily Beazley’s honor. The city honored Emily with a Chicago skyline lit up in purple and green. On May 10, Beazley threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chicago White Sox game versus the Cincinnati Reds. The Sox won 4-3.

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.

Beazley’s mother, Nadia, said her daughter and Swift, who announced in April that her own mother has cancer, spoke for 10 minutes. During their chat, she told the singer her music helped her get through painful treatments and that her favorite song was “Shake It Off.”

Nadia Beazley said her daughter had “the biggest smile” and “jumped up and down” after the Grammy Award winner’s call.

“The smile on my daughter [is one] I have not seen in a very, very long time,” she said at the time. “I could cry.”

She says Swift’s manager offered the family tickets and a chance to meet the singer at her Detroit concert on May 30.

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, when the department made her and her sister Olivia honorary police officers.

Their father, a police detective, said they’d earned the honor.

“They definitely earned it with their loyalty towards each other,” he told reporters. “The best of partners, the best of friends. Olivia hasn’t left her sister’s side since day one.”

The family is asking for privacy, though a public memorial is being planned, the mother said in the Facebook post.

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