MORE PHOTOS AFTER STORY

Cassidy Hooper, 16, from Charlotte, North Carolina, was born without a nose or eyes. But her physical disabilities don’t stop her from wanting a career in radio broadcasting.

She goes to school at The Governor Morehead School in Raleigh, N.C., a residential K-12 school for the blind and she runs on the track team. If that wasn’t enough, she recently qualified for a scholarship to the Charlotte Curling Club.  Cassidy is the person who lets you know that your problems are nothing compared to the challenges you could be facing.  In spite of not being given the same tools as everyone else, the girl is determined to have a life that is full of hope, love and spiritual power.

According to her mom, “She’s very outgoing and never met a stranger. Whenever we go anywhere, she says, ‘Put me by the pool and I’ll go make friends.’ She loves to talk and is very, very self-confident.” And the first week she started attending the school for the blind in the fifth grade, she said to her mother, “Mom, everyone here is blind, so I’m normal.”

Cassidy has undergone several skin grafts and facial reconstructions, at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, since the age of 11. She has to undergo three final surgeries that will use bone from her skull to reshape her face. Doctors will stretch skin flaps over this bone from other parts of her body.

“Cassidy said she is excited that for the first time, she will be able to smell and breathe through her nose. ‘I’ll have a real nose like everyone else’s,’ she said.”

No one knows why Cassidy was born without eyes and a nose, a rare birth defect that likely occurred during the first two weeks of gestation. “Her heart and brain are normal,” said her mother, Susan Hooper. “Nothing else is going on with her.”

From her birth, Cassidy’s reconstructive surgeon, Dr. David Matthews, knew she would eventually have surgery, but had to wait until she stopped growing.

Cassidy has never let anything stand in the way of her optimism and ambition. “Things always may be hard,” Cassidy told ABCNews.com. “But here’s what I think: I don’t need easy, I just need possible.”

When she was young, Cassidy had prosthetics for eyes, but at $5,000 a piece the family could not afford to replace the custom-made eyes when she outgrew them. “Insurance didn’t pay one cent,” said her mother. She said once Cassidy’s nose surgery was complete, they would buy new prosthetic eyes.

Cassidy appeared at a public hearing in Raleigh in 2011, where she was protesting a law that required the Department of Public Instruction to close one of three schools that serve the blind and deaf in North Carolina. Her school was spared.

Read more: Techyville