How We Got The Story: Reliable PR tipster leads us to a 7th-grader's sensation

It was the start of another odd week dominated by coronavirus, and the emails began arriving early and mounting quickly. About 168 messages hit the inbox that Monday - replies to various queries, reports and updates from government officials and agencies, PR pitches, company correspondence, all manner of notifications and so on.

All in all, too many to read closely or react to immediately. But several were worthy of more thorough review later, so I set them aside in what I call the curiosity file.

One of those was from Janet McMahan, a special-education teacher at Mundelein Elementary District 75. The subject line was "D75 student showcases musical talents."

McMahan is now a full-time teacher, but she uses her expertise as a former public relations pro to coordinate and disseminate news about the district. She doesn't flood the media with news releases but parcels them out in a measured manner. The content invariably is of interest.

I scanned her message and learned that 7th grader Chloe Langford had gone above and beyond a language arts assignment to document her life during the stay at home order in a video.

The story seemed nice, but wasn't exactly breaking news. So with other duties stacking up, I made a mental note to check back later.

While the stay at home order was only two weeks old at that point, the coronavirus had been topping headlines and newscasts for months. Daily Herald editors were noticing that not only readers but reporters were nearing corona fatigue. The directive was to look for noncorona news.

But there also is a category I describe in my continuing quest in that regard I call "non-bad corona news" stories of people helping others, going above and beyond and finding new ways to connect and do things - a pool of possibilities. So, I watched "All Day Long (The Coronavirus Song)" on YouTube. And immediately called McMahan for the Langfords' contact information.

The video is high quality and Chloe's voice and musical performance are outstanding. The song itself is so catchy that weeks later, it still pops into my head.

In short, the collaboration between Chloe and her dad, Paul, a professional musician, ignited. Snippets were aired on local TV and NPR. As of Sunday, the YouTube video had garnered 213,225 views.

First, I had to find out what a euphonium was (watch the video) and then spoke with the pair via FaceTime. We chatted a while about how and why this production came to be.

I asked Paul in an email last week whether the success of the video has changed anything. He said it has brought new subscribers to his YouTube channel, and he's been contacted "by people the world." The most interesting responses, he said, have come from euphonium enthusiasasts, "including a member of the President's Own Marine Band and a member of Queen Elizabeth's band."

I previously had asked Chloe when the number of views was 80,000 if she anticipated the reaction.

"I didn't think it would be this big," she said. "I just thought it would be a couple of my parents' friends commenting on Facebook."

Far from it.