An 8-year-old girl from Ohio named Madeline was having dinner with her family on April 21st when she overheard her neighbor, Ethan Hayes, a 26-year-old musician, playing guitar on his porch. "We had the windows open and were making dinner. Even my husband shouted out a little 'Woo!'" said Natalie Hulec, Madeline's 35-year-old mother, to PEOPLE.
Madeline was so captivated by Hayes' playing that she wanted to ask him to sing a song by one of her favorite artists: Taylor Swift. But feeling shy and not wanting to trespas on his property, she came up with a creative way to make her request: sending it via a paper airplane with her mom's help.
At the time, Hayes didn't really know the family well. Although he and his roommate had moved in last September, the neighbors had never met beyond a casual wave or two. That all began to change when Hayes, who totally missed the paper airplane landing in his yard, got a friendly earful from Madeline's stepfather, Russell, who opened the family's kitchen window and shouted to him about the note.
"I was probably looking at lyrics or something on my phone," Hayes recalled. "I was playing and then he's like, 'Hey, man. My daughter just threw an airplane.' So I went over and looked."
When he finally found the note, Hayes says he panicked a little since he wasn't a die-hard Swiftie, but thankfully, he was familiar with her hit song "Love Story." "I'm a musician, so I get requests all the time," he said. "That's one I always usually keep in my back pocket."
To Madeline's delight, even though Hayes didn't know all the words, he began to perform the song. Her mother Natalie, who documented the entire sweet saga on video, told PEOPLE that her daughter "does a lot of cute stuff" - but as soon as Madeline asked for some computer paper so she could write to her neighbor, she felt like this was maybe "the cutest idea" her daughter ever had.
"I took a picture of the note," Natalie continued proudly. "And of course I'm going to watch her attempt to get this over the fence. I was like, 'Let me record this.'" Natalie later posted the clip on TikTok and was blown away by the response.
"We woke up [the next morning] to get her ready for school. It was about 7:30 and there were already 20,000 views," she remembered. "And then it was going up by the thousands and I'm like, 'I got to talk to my neighbor and let him know I posted him.'"
Hayes said even his mom heard about what had happened. "My mom sent the clip to me. She's like, 'Is that you?' I was like, 'Yeah, that's me,'" he said.
As of Tuesday, May 26th, Natalie's TikTok video has gotten over 3 million views - and the viral success has boosted Ethan's profile as well. "I've gained thousands of followers, which is always really great," Hayes said. "We haven't seen one single negative comment, which I think is really, really rare - just a really wholesome situation that I'm really grateful to be a part of."
The family revealed that outside of both neighbors getting to know each other better, another happy outcome came out of the viral porch performance: a response from Swift herself! Hayes confirms that out of nowhere, he got a message from Swift's camp on TikTok. "They're like, 'Hey, Taylor saw your video. We want to send you something. Don't tell anyone until it gets there,'" he shares. "I was expecting maybe a signed poster or something. And then she sent us guitars, which is insane."
Asked what she would like to say to Swift, Madeline - who got her own note and signed guitar - simply says, "Thank you." There's a positive message from the whole experience according to Natalie. "Negativity can be super contagious," she said. "Ethan came through for her and I think a lot of people saw. He's such a genuine, sweet guy, so we really lucked out." Meanwhile, Madeline hopes that people will feel inspired - "to make more videos about paper airplanes."
