Young Swiftie scores seat at sold-out Eras Tour after holding up sign outside BC Place

Thirteen-year-old Sidney Ha was among the throngs of Swifties without a ticket to the Eras Tour in Vancouver who gathered outside of a fenced-off BC Place Saturday night – but thanks to one stranger’s act of kindness, she ended up inside the stadium singing along.

Sidney’s mom Yendi Pang says she and her daughter were among the countless fans who started trying to get tickets a year ago, as soon as the tour was announced.

• Photo gallery: Taylor Swift ends global phenomenon Eras Tour in Vancouver

As the shows in their hometown grew closer, the pair joined thousands in virtual queues hoping to get last-minute seats whenever a new batch was released on Ticketmaster.

They didn’t have any luck, and the re-sale prices were just too high.

“Last night we were just like, ‘You know what? We’re just going to go downtown. We’re going to go and experience it,’” Yendi told CTV News Sunday.

Standing outside the stadium, Yendi and Sidney saw two young Swifties holding a sign that said “We will happily accept tickets.”

The sign worked. Someone approached the duo and offered them tickets. Instead of throwing their sign out – as they planned to – they gave it to Sidney.

 “She took the sign and she was standing in front of the gate for over an hour,” Yendi said.

At the same time, a woman who had snagged a last-minute pair of tickets was trying to find a “baby Swiftie” to gift one to.

Yendi says when the woman approached her daughter and offered to give her a ticket and take her into the show, she was shocked and a little skeptical at first.

Sidney was ecstatic.

“My daughter just started crying and said yes,” Yendi says. “I don’t even think she knew what was happening. She was just crying and saying, ‘I’m going to go see Taylor Swift.’”

Video shows the moment the two newly introduced Swifties scanning their tickets and bolting for the door, while cheers erupt behind them.

“She definitely got what she dreamed of, she was over the moon,” Yendi said of her daughter’s experience, adding that she tracked the teen’s location and stayed outside until the concert ended.

Yendi said she wanted to tell the story because the competition for tickets has been so fierce, there have been so many stories of people trying to take advantage of the demand to see the shows, and there have been so many tales of frustration and disappointment from devoted young fans.

“I just had to share this because I felt like it helps redeem humankind a little,” Yendi said.

“I just felt like it would be good to highlight that there is some good in the world.”

Hana Padua, the woman who took Sidney to see the show, said she and her partner travelled in from Vancouver Island for Friday’s concert – after paying $3,400 for a pair of tickets.

In town for another night, the couple travelled down to the sold-out stadium to check out the crowd and see if they could get their hands on any last-minute tickets.

Swift had already finished her first three songs by the time Padua had secured two tickets to the “no-view” section of the show for $15 each.

“I said if I got tickets, I was just going to bring a baby Swiftie inside with me,” Padua told CTV News, explaining that her partner was totally on board with the plan because they knew they were fortunate to have seen the show once, and to have found the last-minute seats for the second night.

“We felt really bad there’s a lot of fans who couldn’t go in,” she said. “We were lucky and we wanted to share that.”

While the tickets were the ones billed as “no-view,” Padua says they could see half of the stage and were positioned so they could watch the pop star leave at the end.

“We got to say goodbye to Taylor, to wave goodbye as she left the stage,” she said.  

Watching Sidney enjoy the show, Padua said she saw herself in the younger fan – who stood, danced and sang through the entire show – tears of joy streaming down her face.

“I was once a baby Swiftie too,” she said.