When Cassidy Hooper was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1996, doctors were surprised to see her very rare birth defect – she was born without eyes or a nose.

“Her heart and brain are normal,” said her mother, Susan Hooper. “Nothing else is going on with her.”

Cassidy’s reconstructive surgeon, Dr. David Matthews, knew Cassidy would eventually have surgery to build the features onto her face, but they had to wait for her to stop growing.

Then, he began the tricky task of expanding the skin above her nose and widening her face to create an opening and another airway.

As a little girl, Hooper had prosthetic for eyes, but her family’s insurance would not pay for them. Since they cost $5,000 a piece and were not functional anyway, they could not afford to replace them right away after she outgrew them.

“Insurance didn’t pay one cent,” said her mother. “We had already started the process to do her nose, moving her eyes closer together and having her skull reshaped. We were not going to pay for it then have to pay again.”

She said once Hooper’s nose surgery was complete, they would buy new prosthetic eyes.

While she experienced “a bit of teasing” as a child, it never really bothered her. When she began attending Governor Morehead School for the Blind in 5th grade, she told her mother: “Mom, everyone here is blind, so I’m normal.” Hooper has always had a great attitude about her disability and has been willing to answer questions about it for others.

Her mother called her friendly and “very self-confident,” eager to make friends wherever she went. She’s also wildly independent.

“In middle school Cassidy started going to a special school in Raleigh – she’d hop the bus in Charlotte every week, travel alone across the state then travel back at the end of the week,” said WBTV news anchor Molly Grantham.

No big deal for Hooper.

“To me, if it’s something hard, I get through it,” she said.

Before she graduated high school, Hooper got her first nose after undergoing roughly 5 years of skin grafts and facial reconstructions at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. It was the first time she was able to smell and breathe through her nose.

“I’ll never forget how when she first woke up and could smell something for the first time, she said she wanted to try chicken nuggets,” said Grantham.

Hooper started college in 2016 at Central Piedmont Community College majoring in mass communication and broadcasting.

“When she was 11 years old she told me she wanted to be a radio talk show host. That dream has never changed. It’s still her goal,” recalled Grantham.

In July 2019, Hooper underwent yet another nose reconstruction surgery after she recently realized the bridge of her nose had been slowly collapsing since her initial reconstruction in 2013.

In order to fix it, her doctors took three pieces from her skull in order to rebuild the bridge.

“He uses her own body parts for less chance of her body rejecting it,” father Aaron Hooper said.

But 2019 was also the year in which Hooper graduated with her Associate’s Degree in mass communications.

Throughout her life, her motto has been: “I don’t need easy, I just need possible.” And it looks like anything is possible for this ambitious young woman.

Be sure to scroll down below to see an interview with Cassidy Hooper following her college graduation.

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Source: WBTV News, Molly’s Kids, ABC News, CBS17 via YouTube