ALTAMONT — Lexie Paddon is just 18, but she already knows what she wants to do with her life: She wants to be a Family Court attorney and help children “who don’t have a voice of their own.”

In addition to providing them legal representation, she also hopes to lead children to music, since music was a great help to her when she was a child and felt different from all her friends for being raised by a single mother with no father in the picture.

For now, she will be performing country music, solo, every day during the Altamont Fair.

After graduating from Mohonasen High School in 2016, Paddon went to The College of Saint Rose, where she will be a sophomore this fall. She is doing a double major in social work and pre-law, with a minor in criminal justice.

Her interest in advocating for children arose when she did an internship, in her senior year of high school, at the Bradt School in the Mohonasen School District, working with at-risk children.  

The experience made her think that young children “shouldn’t have to follow their parents’ destiny just because they don’t have anybody else to show them what’s right from wrong. They should be able to decide what they want to be, and how they want their lives to turn out,” she said.

Paddon caught the show-business bug early, when she acted in third grade as a young princess in the high school’s performance of “The King and I.” A senior in the show knew that Paddon liked to “dance around my room all the time and sing,” and encouraged her to audition.

She has been in “12 or 13 musicals” altogether, Paddon said, and performed for years in her school’s choir and select choir, while also participating in the New York State School Music Association adjudications each year. In her senior year, she got a score of 97 out of 100 and was selected for the area All-State Choir.

Almost three years ago, when she was 16, she auditioned in New York City for the television show “The Voice.” She made it through the initial in-person audition, and was called back to sing in a recording studio. “But they thought I sounded too young, so I didn’t make it any further,” she said, calling it “a really cool experience.”

At the fair, she will be singing mostly country music, but will also “throw in a little Ed Sheeran and Sara Bareilles.” She likes country, she said, because “it all has a meaning to it.”

“You don’t have to belt and overdo it,” she said. “A lot of country music is just simple, and soft, gentle singing. And, to me, I just think that sounds better. It shows natural, raw talent.”