Miss America Pageant leads to singing career for Jill Mertens

After her talent portion of Miss America finished, after the preliminary rounds, she was approached by Universal Records, in which they asked her if she was interested in signing with them. She told them she needed to complete her reign as Miss North Dakota first.
During that year, she went to over 150 schools across the state, and would talk to students. She would drive herself and usually stayed with school staff families, and got to know many people across the state. The younger grade school students would ask her questions about what she did, and when she talked to the older students she could get into more depth on many subjects, but her overall message was about how to be the best you possible and how to be a good person.
Once Jill completed her year as Miss North Dakota, she set out to Los Angeles, by herself in her red Oldsmobile to Universal Records. She met Sylvia Rhone, the head of the company, and that day she asked Jill to sing her a song during their interview. Sylvia then asked her “are you ready to perform on stage tomorrow in front of 25,000 people?” Jill didn’t know how it would go on her first performance on stage especially with the majority of the audience being black and having grown up singing in the church, and mainly country and pop she was unsure of this request, however decided to give it a shot. She opened with three songs and was well accepted by the crowd and continued to tour, and opened shows throughout the country with various music artists such as Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Earth Wind and Fire, Nelly, and many more. She was then able to get into the production part of the music business, and worked with some very well known names in the industry for a time.
One day she was talking with a recording artist, and Jill told her that she was feeling a calling from God that she should be doing something different with her life, that there was an uncertain spirit in her and that she should make a change. “Satan wanted to drive a wedge in my life and I was feeling this more and more, each day,” Jill said. “When God tells you to do something, you obey!”
A well known singer told her, if she had to do it all over again, she probably would not have chosen fame and fortune, even though she had been very successful. After six years in the music industry, she made a 180 degree turn, left all the glamour, money and lifestyle and began her new journey. Her father came to California to bring her back home at the age of 26.
She stayed with her parents, and Jill said she felt a deep sense of emptiness, sadness, and depression and really needed to find herself once again and she needed healing. She really dug into the Bible each day for the next couple of years. She released her first Contemporary/Christian/Gospel CD in 2011 and decided to attend Minneapolis School of Business with the scholarship money from her pageant year, and she earned her paralegal diploma.
During this time while she was attending a sports event in the cities she met Jay Baker. They seemed to have a lot of common interests. His father was a pastor at a church in St. Louis Park and Jay was an occupational therapist. Jill and Jay were married in 2009 and moved to Rochester. She worked for a law firm there, and Jay ran a baseball academy in Rochester as well as continuing to be an occupational therapist. Jill had considered attending law school. They had two children and were expecting their third, so she gave up on that idea, as it would be too stressful and hard on the family.
Since they were taking care of their own children, people would ask them if they would consider having a daycare at their home. They both loved children, they could be at home, and Jay would do many of the outside activities such as kickball and other games with them.
In 2015 they started Creative Star’s Daycare, a family operated childcare.
They started getting more and more calls from families asking if they could enroll their children, but they were at their full capacity. They started looking for a building, but had little to no money to work with.
They said “God will open doors, if it is His will” and finally after three years a family friend told them about a church that had been vacated in Rochester on 19th Ave NW. When she saw the building, it was what they were looking for to fit their needs and was in the heart of Rochester. That night she started drawing up the plans for the rooms with her son’s sketchpad and what needed to be remodeled. When she brought the plan to an architect, Jill was asked who drew up the plans and Jill told them it was herself and they were impressed.
With the help of Key Builders, they opened Creative Stars Academy in 2018 with a capacity of 95 children for ages six weeks to 12 years. They were there to create a sense of community, family-centered, welcoming, loving, educational childcare that embraced the uniqueness of each child in a faith based setting. They want to mentor the staff since they are all on the same team and they want to help their staff to succeed and grow. Their goal is to do the very best they can each and every day with the purpose of helping families and children. There is no such thing as a perfect daycare, but they stand strong with their mission and always look to grow, improve and challenge their staff to great things.
(Wayne Hendrickson concludes his conversation with Jill in next week’s DCI.)