Twenty-eight million people watched Sarasota’s own Syesha Mercado shake, shimmy, sob and sing her heart out on American Idol this season—coming from behind each week yet never losing her million-watt smile. In the process, this determined young dynamo earned the devotion of legions of voters and finished a remarkable third place on America’s No. 1 most-watched television show.

In Sarasota-Bradenton, where Syesha had graduated from the Visual and Performing Arts program at Booker High School in 2005, had sung the national anthem at spring training games for the Pittsburgh Pirates at McKechnie Field since the age of nine, and had participated in both Take Stock in Children and the Sarasota Family YMCA Achievers program, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon.  

Crowds cheered her performances around a big-screen TV every Tuesday night at Mattison’s City Grille and in the Booker VPA auditorium. Co-workers who’d never before watched American Idol gathered around computers and water coolers Wednesday mornings to pick apart her every move. (Her slinky red dress on Andrew Lloyd Webber night! The way she sang Yesterday!) A couple of thousand people who cut across all demographics turned out at the Ringling Museum on her hometown tour day, which was taped for national broadcast. In dramatic fashion, she arrived on the museum grounds via helicopter. The Idol to whom our community gave so much gave back.

Barbara Johnson, Syesha’s mentor in the Take Stock in Children program, says the 21-year-old’s onstage poise and good humor, despite being in the middle of television’s biggest pressure cooker, was not unexpected. (Take Stock participants are youngsters from low-income families who make a multiyear pledge to make good grades, remain crime- and drug-free and receive weekly mentoring in exchange for a four-year college scholarship.) Johnson, a retired creative drama teacher who was paired with the bright young aspiring actress/singer in the fall of 2001, when Syesha transferred from the Manatee School for the Arts, says, “She’s just as beautiful inside as she is outside.”  

Johnson and Syesha sat down together on Day One and set goals. “From the beginning, her goal was musical theater,” Johnson says. Through Syesha’s now well-recorded childhood challenges—her father is a recovering addict, her family home burned down while she was in high school—Johnson says she never wavered.

The two met every week at school. “We worked on college applications and scholarships,” Johnson says. “I would hear lines [at Booker, Syesha played the Sour Kangaroo in Seussical the Musical—for which she won best supporting actress at the 2005 Florida and Southeastern Theater Conferences—and also starred in Once on This Island]; we’d talk personally. We were very comfortable with each other from the very beginning.”

Johnson and her husband, Dick, attended all of Syesha’s Booker VPA shows and Take Stock in Children end-of-the-year dinners, where Syesha always sang. After Syesha’s freshman year at Florida International University in Miami, the Johnsons helped organize a dinner—along with retired Booker principal Jan Gibbs and other supporters—that raised $4,600 for her college expenses.

Syesha put her college education on hold when she embarked on American Idol. “I was a little afraid to tell Barbara [about auditioning for Idol] because she was so behind me being in school,” Syesha told us. “But she wants me to pursue my dreams.” Johnson concurs. “I was thrilled at how well she carried college, and I’m very glad she got as much as she did,” she says. As for Idol, “I was thrilled knowing this was going toward her goal.”

Like legions of Sarasotans caught up in the excitement, “I hadn’t been an American Idol watcher; I only knew it by name,” says Johnson. “But we were faithful, and I would practically fall asleep keeping our two phones dialing for those three months. My garden group, Dick’s bridge group—they all got into it.”

“She was very energetic, a leader,” YMCA Achievers director Joe Wright remembers. “She did everything from going on college tours [they visited seven universities throughout Florida in four days] to volunteering with the younger children, volunteering for Going for the Gold, stuffing bags, anything to help out.” Wright says it’s “really breathtaking” to see how much Syesha has grown.

Syesha says she kept in touch throughout the competition with her Booker VPA teacher, Johnnie Mnich, and with old friends. Johnson called or e-mailed her after every performance.  “My friends and family keep me sane,” Syesha told us. “They remind me of who I am. They say, ‘Just breathe.’”

“Sometimes you’re left to wonder what effect you’re having; sometimes it can be years,” says Johnson about their Take Stock in Children relationship. But she didn’t have to wait that long to know how much their relationship had meant to Syesha. In the spring of her freshman year of college, Syesha wrote her mentor a letter, saying, “It was because of that one day shared with you I could make it through the rest of the week.” Johnson says, “I cried.”

What’s next for Syesha? Last summer she was part of the 51-city American Idol tour, posed for a bikini fashion spread in Britain’s OK magazine, and worked on a demo recording.

“I want to do everything,” she told Entertainment Weekly. And her list of ambitions includes not only personal fame and success but helping others, just as she was helped growing up in Sarasota.

“I want to make an album, do Broadway, act in films, open restaurants, homeless shelters, lupus foundations [her older sister has the disease]. I’m really goal-oriented, and if you’re driven and focused it will happen for you,” she says.

It wouldn’t surprise those who know her best in Sarasota to see her do all that—and more.