Jake Zyrus (known as Charice Pempengco prior to his gender transition) was born in Cabuyao, Philippines. When he was three years old, he witnessed his abusive father point a gun at his mom during an episode of domestic violence. Along with his mother and younger brother Carl, they left their father searching for a better life. Zyrus was very young when his mother noted that his rendition of "Happy Birthday" was very high-pitched and on-key. When he was four years old, his mother Raquel came home to discover Zyrus standing on top of the kitchen table singing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." She initially thought the radio was on, and that Celine was singing. Zyrus had learned to operate the karaoke machine by observing his mother, who was a singer in a band, practice with her bandmates. It was then that Zyrus' singing talent was discovered. At the age of seven, with money hard to come by and with little food to put on the table, Zyrus urged his mother to teach him how to sing and let him join singing contests to help support their family. He went around the provinces of Laguna and Batangas, entering amateur singing contests in town fiestas and later, on little-known shows on television. He started winning most of the competitions he joined, often borrowing money from friends and neighbors for the bus fare and then paying them back after winning. He estimates he joined 80-100 singing contests all in all. In 2005 when he was twelve years old, he joined Little Big Star, a singing contest for children on TV network ABS-CBN, loosely patterned after American Idol. He was eliminated after the first round but was called back as a wild card contestant later on in the show. From there, he was a consistent top scorer in the elimination rounds but only wound up as a third placer in the finals due to low text votes. Dejected as he was counting on winning the grand prize of P1 million pesos ($20,000) for his family, he wanted to give up on singing. He made minor appearances on TV shortly after Little Big Star, dancing backup and singing in the background on variety shows, but he had fallen off the radar. He eventually decided to give it all up and return to regular schooling. Little did he know that David Dueñas (a.k.a FalseVoice), a fan of his, was so in awe of his powerful vocals and performances on Little Big Star that he started uploading them on YouTube. His videos were racking up millions of hits online, and one of his videos caught the eye of StarKing, a Korean variety show. In 2007, StarKing invited then 15-year old Zyrus to come to South Korea to perform. Dressed in pink and wearing pigtails, Zyrus blew the roof off the set as he performed a hair-raising and powerful rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from the Dreamgirls soundtrack. The studio audience was floored to hear such a big voice coming out of such a small child.