Steve Young Helps Make Music Therapy Center A Reality At Sutter Children's Center

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Music therapy has a new home at Sutter Children's Center.

Pediatric patients are using "Sophie's Place" to help them cope with their physical and psychological needs during treatment.

Retired 49er quarterback Steve Young and his wife Barb helped make Sophie's Place a reality. They say they were inspired to give back after Sophie Barton – the daughter of a family friend who happened to be a singer-songwriter – died in 2010.

Sophie's legacy is now shining bright in Sacramento as music is now in perfect harmony with traditional medicine.

Seventeen-year-old Emily Lucero – bobbing her head above the crowd – knows the healing power of music all too well.

"I'm a huge Michael Jackson fan. And I would just listen to old 80's music, like Journey, the Band and Selena Gomez," Emily said.

Emily has been in-and-out of Sutter Hospital since she was nine-months-old. And when she recently had her small intestine removed, she found comfort in singing and playing the drums.

"For Emily, music is the way that she copes with all of the hospitalizations," said Emily's mom Laura Lucero.

Here at the newly opened Sophie's Place, patients like Emily can expand on that sound medicine – coupled with a little star treatment.

The Forever Young Foundation – run by Young and his wife Barb – gave the project a $150,000 boost.

"These music therapists are scientists. They're using music to change the neuropathways and literal brain science that creates new neuropathways," Steve Young said.

"Those kids get to write, create, compose and produce their own songs that they then gift to their family before they pass," Barb Young said. "We've seen it and it's incredible."

The facility is named after 17-year-old Sophie Barton, a singer-songwriter and hospital volunteer from Utah who died suddenly in 2010.

"It's continuing her legacy, which you can imagine means so very much," said Sophie's mother Anne-Marie Barton.

It's equally meaningful for therapists too, who've made guitars and tambourines new age medical equipment.

"Through that process of just creating, you're changing their brain, but you're also changing their life," said music therapist Tara McConnell.

Sacramento is the second city to open a Sophie's Place. The Young's say a third will be opening in Mesa, Arizona later this year.

Three others are also in the works in the Bay Area.