Heartwarming surprise flash mob celebrates Spanish exchange student’s Sweet 16, going viral online

By Erin Jones

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    North Texas (KTVT) — Before Nicolasa Gomez Fernandez, or Nico, ever arrived in the U.S. from Spain, her host family had a surprise in the works to make her “Sweet 16” birthday unforgettable.

“The exchange students, this is not our first time to host, and they all think the United States is ‘High School Musical,'” Cort Laurence said.

“Um, it’s very different from the life I have in Spain,” Fernandez said.

When Fernandez sat down for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Euless, she thought it was just a casual night out.

Little did she know, Cort Laurence’s son, Grayson, a member of Trinity High School’s show choir, had recruited more than two dozen students to pull off this surprise flash mob.

“I got a poll of who all could do it and I just made a big group chat, and we went from there,” he said.

The choir spent six months rehearsing. Fernandez’s reaction? Priceless.

“When Grayson starts singing, she turns to him and her face… and then he does his little glance at her.. and she just starts giggling after that,” Cort Laurence said.

“When I saw Grayson start dancing and then I thought maybe this is for me, and then they start dancing around the table,” Fernandez said. ” I… I was in shock.”

“We keep loving all the different faces that she makes because she goes through all of the emotions. That’s my favorite thing about the video,” Cort Laurence said.

The surprise was shared online and quickly went viral.

One woman dining nearby, in the middle of a breakup, even shared on TikTok that this performance brought her joy. That video has now been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

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