Ceres teen couldn't believe The Rock was talking to her — until he started spilling details
Saturday's surprise party for Ceres High sophomore Jillian Jimenez had a "Star Wars" theme. But edited into the Millennium Falcon cockpit photo on the invitation, right there alongside Luke, Obi-Wan, Han and Chewbacca, was superstar actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Each character was accompanied by a cartoon dialogue bubble, and Johnson's read, "I go where I want."
Little did the birthday girl or nearly all her guests know just how true that statement was. Until a projector screen that had been showing "Star Wars" movies suddenly lit up with a sweet-16 wish from Johnson.
In it, he sings her praises and congratulates her. "You have a 3.8 GPA, you're working hard to get a 4.0," he says. "You do tennis, you do Academic Decathlons — I don't even know what that is." He commends her volunteer work with World Relief, tutoring a student whose part of a refugee family from Afghanistan.
"You are doing amazing work, honey," he says before singing "Happy Birthday" to her and then signing off to get out of the cold in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In response to a a slew of letters written by Jillian's mom, Beth Parker Jimenez, to "everyone I could find associated with him in a professional capacity," Johnson filmed the video at 3 a.m. one Thursday morning in October after wrapping the day's filming of the action movie "Skyscraper."
When her mom announced during the party that she had a special video to play, Jillian said she figured it was a slide show about her. Even when Johnson appeared and said the name "Jillian," she figured that it was a joke, that her parents had found a clip of the actor talking to some other Jillian.
"Then he started saying all these personal things about me, and I was shocked and I almost started crying," the teen said Monday. "... I think it was incredibly nice of him and he's probably one of the only actors who would have done something like that."
Jillian also is "incredibly grateful" to her mom for the effort she put into trying to get a birthday wish from The Rock, whose latest movie, "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," opens Dec. 20. "My biggest dream is to meet him."
Beth Jimenez shared in her letter to the actor that her daughter has a bucket list topped by "Attend Oxford University" and "Meet Dwayne Johnson."
She wanted to do something for Jillian's 16th that would have a big impact and inspire her, Jimenez said. She figured getting a birthday wish from Johnson was a long shot because her daughter is just a "regular kid," not someone who's "overcome insurmountable odds or battled a grave disease."
But she also figured that if she succeeded, an extraordinary act like Johnson sending Jillian a birthday greeting would help her daughter realize that her own extraordinary goals can be reached. So she shared with the actor some of Jillian's activities that show she is "driven in a way that I have seen in few kids her age."
When Jimenez saw in her inbox about a month and a half ago an email from an unfamiliar sender, with a subject line of something like "Happy birthday Jillian," she was blown away when she watched the included video. And sitting on the secret until the party was incredibly hard, she said.
She told only her husband, Gilbert, and the tech team at her workplace, Ceres Unified School District, because she needed some help in figuring out how to play the video at Jillian's birthday party. She didn't even tell older daughter Lia, a junior at California State University, Fresno. "We knew the energy would be different if it was a surprise for everyone."
When Johnson went into detail about her, "her mouth just dropped more and more," Jimenez said.
And Jillian said her mom's efforts had the desired effect of reminding her that her dreams, no matter how big, can be realized.
"I wouldn’t be at all surprised," Jimenez said in her letter to Johnson, "if one day you happen to be in London and a tall girl with caramel-colored eyes and a dopey grin approaches and asks you to write, 'Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?' on her Oxford sweatshirt."
This story was originally published December 11, 2017 at 1:43 PM with the headline "Ceres teen couldn't believe The Rock was talking to her — until he started spilling details."