With every beat of her heart

Every dancer says how much dancing fills their heart. But Casey Hoeft will tell you how dancing has been a real life saver for her heart.

When Casey hits the stage there's only three dance accessories she needs: A great outfit, a good pair of dancing shoes and the pacemaker set deep in her chest that's constantly choreographing her heart's beats.

Grown-ups used to worry if pushing herself on stage could threaten her health, since Casey was born with a serious heart defect. But it turns out that the athletic heart has been the thing that has kept this dancer vibrant and strong, leaping and twirling from a child that was tired too soon, to a young woman now known for her stamina and physique.

"There's nothing wrong with me. You can't even see it, except for the scar," Casey said, pulling back her shirt to reveal a small light mark on her skin.
But adults often worry anyway, something that seems to frustrate Casey a little, but she still takes it in stride.

"Even the doctors are amazed at what I can do," she said proudly.

"Yes, it's true," said her father, Randy Hoeft. "During an examination after her pacemaker was put in, her doctor (Dr. Ricardo Samson at the University of Arizona Medical Center), asked what all she had been doing, and Casey said she was dancing, which included ballet, tap and jazz, was in gymnastics, and water athletics.

"And Dr. Samson looked rather astonished and said, 'Really?'"

Casey recently graduated from Cibola High School, afterwhich a recent Dawn's Dance Studio performance made quite a buzz, because that event was likely Casey's last performance with the studio - as a regular student, at least.

That studio's owner, Dawn Atherton stressed that most people who see Casey in action would guess that if anything is different about her heart or her body it's the fact that they're both super-charged and leading the way.

"Casey is probably one of the most athletic dancers, just so cut and defined and extremely strong," Atherton said. "She has some of the best endurance here.

"But when she falls, I still get nervous," the dance instructor said. "But it's never been her pacemaker. It's always been something else."

Casey was born with a heart that's missing a vital piece, a "wire" her doctors said, that controls one of the two chambers and makes them beat in rhythm. The condition was discovered by chance when Casey was having surgery to remove her appendix. It also happened to be her 10th birthday.

Her father recalled being concerned by the sight of nurses repeatedly re-entering Casey's recovery room, putting heart-monitoring equipment on his daughter and running test after test. As it turns out, doctors had heard something amiss in the young patient's heartbeat, but the parents weren't immediately informed.

Doctors at the UofA eventually discovered that Hoeft would likely need a pacemaker once she was a little older, if she began to show signs of an enlarged heart. And that happened in just two years.

At the same time her parents and Atherton noticed something was wrong, too, because the usually non-stop Casey began to tire very easily.

"Doctors said at the time my heart was the size of a grown man's," Casey said.

"Her doctor and the others who conferred with him at the University of Arizona Medical Center pointed out that they had never seen a case before like Casey," said Randy, "...that her case would probably end up in some medical journal; and that she was truly 'one in a million.'"

So when Casey returned to dance lessons and performances her parents encouraged her by stressing she was different only in one way - and a good one.

"...I tried to emphasize to her that she was not some sort of 'freak' or anything like that but rather she was 'special, very very special,'" her father recalled. "And that was how we left it. She was special."

That phrase would come to delight Casey's father when his daughter was being interviewed for enrollment at Yuma Catholic High School, which she attended for two years.

"The counselor was concluding the interview and at the end he asked 'Is there anything else I should know about you?' And Casey responded 'Yes, I'm special.'"

Casey began dancing when she was just 3 years old. She would go on to study with both Dancer's Workshop and Dawn's Dance Studio.

"Dancing takes off all the stress. It's a place to get away, to be happy," Casey said. "You can be who you want to be and people accept you for who you are."

She credited her heart condition for pushing her to consciously explore her abilities and limitations in a way that most people seldom choose. She said that her condition also forced her to train her body to a greater degree than if her heart was normal.

"I've learned a lot about myself because of this," she said.

"Her future is unfolding, the dance world is very lucky," said Linda Farrar, who Casey first studied under at Dancer's Workshop. "You know ... I have never seen any illness or struggle get her down. Casey is remarkable."

These days the only way Casey's heart defect lets itself be known is when she gets worn out a bit faster than most days.

"Sometimes I get a little winded faster, but it's not a big deal," Casey said, adding that she just has to be more efficient with how she uses her energy.

The recent graduate says she will certainly keep dancing, one way or another, but her plans are definitely far from concrete. Casey has been considering college out of town or maybe staying here to attend Arizona Western College. The matter of a major is also in the air.

"No idea. Maybe dance. Really don't know," she said. "You just go with the flow. You don't have to have everything planned out. Things change. Your mind changes."

For sure, though, Casey knows she wants two things in life.

"I want to be successful," she said, smiling. "And I just want to be happy."