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Giant step for inventive teen

Texting with feet a $25,000 idea for girl on the go

James B. Meadow

Published April 22, 2008 at 11 p.m.

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Molly Casey stand with a life-size skeleton in her home Wednesday. An entrepreneur with "Beads 'n Things by Molly Cate" and inventor of a prize-winning video game, she plans to turn an interest in bones into a career as a pediatric orthopedist.

Photo by Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Molly Casey stand with a life-size skeleton in her home Wednesday. An entrepreneur with "Beads 'n Things by Molly Cate" and inventor of a prize-winning video game, she plans to turn an interest in bones into a career as a pediatric orthopedist.

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The 13-year-old girl with green and pink rubber bands in her mouth, the hand-drawn "I (heart) Nick Jonas" inscription on her ankle, and $25,000 in the bank is standing next to the anatomically correct human skeleton she received as a Christmas present, talking about dolls, Hannah Montana and the birthing of babies.

Seemingly without the need to take in oxygen, she already has explained to her fossilized visitor why "I luuuuuuv mountain biking," how "I am a science freeeeeak," the utter bliss of text messaging, why human bones are "so interesting and entertaining," the fact that her home business is called "Beads 'n Things by Molly Cate" and how, before she enrolled at the Young Americans Bank, "I used to not save at all but now I'm good at putting money away and forgetting about it."

Ladies and gentlemen, before she gets going again, allow us to introduce Molly Catherine Casey, full-time seventh-grader, part-time entrepreneur, text-messaging maven and - omg - green-eyed dervish of precocious productivity.

One day, she blithely predicts, she also will be a pediatric orthopedist. But today, she's the award-winning creator of Txt it!, a video-game concept with a cellphone keypad floor mat that melds text messaging with exercise, keeping you on your toes by making you type with them. What's more -

Good golly, Miss Molly, now you've got us speeding on. OK, fellow fossils, deep breath. More oxygen. Now on with our tale.

'My head stores things'

Last fall, Molly, a student at Montclair Academy in Denver, learned about Ruckus Nation, a global idea competition sponsored by nonprofit HopeLab. The concept was simple. People of all ages were invited "to imagine a new product that is fun and cool enough to make kids want to get up and move around," read the online posting. A little glory and a lot of cash were the rewards.

Molly, an apostle of text messaging, had been noodling an idea like Txt it! for a while. Luckily, "My head stores things that can be used later." Of course, it's hard to imagine there's a lot of storageroom left in her cranium, it's so chock full of, y'know, brains.

Why, when she was 2 years old and munching Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast, she was already watching actual deliveries of babies on cable TV. A few years later, she graduated to full-scale surgeries on the tube. What others might find icky, she found "cool." So cool that by the time she was 7, she decided to be a pediatric orthopedist because she liked kids and found bones "so interesting and entertaining."

As she got older and became that science "freak," she fell in love with anything to with "DNA of bones, red blood cells and all that crazy stuff." Which is why when her parents got her that replica skeleton for her "office" in their south Denver home, she was thrilled and promptly named it "MaDamme Bones."

Oh, wait - we were talking about the contest.

From thoughts to paper

Anyway, she sat down, organized her thoughts and submitted her idea for Txt it! That was in November. On Jan. 29, the day before she turned 13, she was informed she had won $250 as a semifinalist. On Feb. 1, she was interviewed on the phone by competition officials. They must have liked what they heard because "they called me back literally a minute later" and told her she was one of the three winners in the middle-school category and how did $25,000 sound?

It took "about a week" for that news to register, but when it did, "I started jumping up and down and screaming, 'Ohmigod (or omg in text talk, for all your fossils), I'm a winner!' "

Making her feat even more noteworthy was the fact that Ruckus Nation had drawn 429 entries from 37 countries and 41 states, from people aged 6 to 82. And in the end, only eight had walked away with $25,000.

The hardest part was Molly couldn't tell anyone she'd won until the awards ceremony in March, which was held in San Francisco. And even if she didn't win the really grand prize of $50,000, well, that's okay.

"It would have been nice to win it, but I would have just had to pay more taxes," she says, launching one of her bright, broad smiles, revealing a mouthful of braces held in place by those pink-and-green rubber bands. Even now, she's still a little miffed that her category prize means "I have to pay $4,300 in taxes."

Spoken like a true captalist. After all, if Molly could get a handle on obstetrics at the age of 2, you don't she was going to have a problem making room in her brain for finances, do you? Ergo, those sessions spent at Young Americans Bank, learning how about saving and running Beads 'n Things were put to good use.

An easy kid, mother says

Ask what she intends to do with her dough and she says that since her parents have said college is on them she's going to put it into "a CD or a bond or something with high interest."

What she will not do is follow the advice of some of her male classmates who advised her to "spend it on paintball stuff."

Still, if Nick Jonas came by and asked for a loan, well, forget the CD. For all you fossils out there, he's a member of the Jonas Brothers, a boy band Molly luuuuuuvs, maybe even more than Hannah Montana (you've got to know who she is), although it's hard to say since an equal number of posters of each festoon the walls of her bedroom. Where, by the way, she sleeps so soundly that mom Sally says, "She's a really easy kid - except when it comes to getting her up in the morning and out the door for school."

Molly's bedroom, by the way, is not to be confused with her "office," which, in addition to MaDamme Bones, has anatomy charts on the walls, an IV stand in the corner and a bright pink chair in front of her computer.

It is from here that more stuff will be learned and stored in her brain. More cool ideas will take wing. New jewlery and doo-dad designs for Beads 'n Things will be born. New professions of love for Nick Jonas will be applied to her ankle. And countless text messages will be launched to friends.

And if Molly's parents aren't always thrilled with her bent for texting, well, that's OK. Hey, even a precocious pediatric orthopedist wannabe ought to have one habit that's a bone of contention.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

Winning concept

* What is Txt it! A video game concept that uses a floor mat designed to duplicate the keypad of a cellphone. The mat is hooked up to a video monitor, which provides prompts for different word games. Upon reading the clues, the players use their feet to step on the appropriate keys to type - or tap dance - the answers. Another application could be to hook the Txt it! floor mat to an actual cellphone. Kids could work out while texting friends.

* Where do I get one! Txt it! doesn't exist yet. Casey's invention is purely theoretical. However, if research and development indicate its promise as a game, it conceivably could be produced one day. That decision will be up to HopeLab, a California-based nonprofit that works to provide "innovative solutions to improve the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness," its Web site says.

Comments

  • April 23, 2008

    7:12 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vudumom writes:

    What a wonderful, refreshing young lady!!!!!

  • April 23, 2008

    9:12 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    holekeeper writes:

    Finally a story I can say that I fully enjoyed reading and I was finding myself saying good for her and I hope my 7 year old is this bight at 12 or 13!

  • April 23, 2008

    11:23 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Scott writes:

    Holy Cow! What a kid!

    Scott