Twelve-year-old Ilana Wexler was hanging out at home in Oakland's Rockridge district Wednesday when her friend called to invite her out next week.

Her friend: Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

The invitation: To address the Democratic National Convention -- and the nation -- during prime time Tuesday night.

"I was like, 'Oh, my God,'" she recalled Friday during a telephone interview from her grandmother's Brookline, Mass., home, where the national media were beating a path to her door. "I don't know what to think. I'm just totally blown away."

Ilana truly will have something special to say in her "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" essay when she starts seventh grade in fall at the Julia Morgan School for Girls. Not only has she landed a speaking engagement for which many career politicians gladly would surrender a limb, but she'll be following the Democratic ticket through swing states this summer, spreading her message that kids count.

She is the founder of KidsForKerry.org, an online community of children across the nation who are doing what they can to see that Kerry will be the next president of the United States. She also founded kids4change.com, a federal political action committee with the same goal.

"We know how to talk to our parents and get our way," kids4change.com says.

Indeed, Ilana speaks with self-assurance and eloquence uncommon for her scant years, which should stand her in good stead as she speaks to millions of Americans next week.

"I'm speaking mainly about what I've been doing with Kids for Kerry," she said, "I'm talking to kids out there in the United States ... to tell them how to get involved."

This all began last year as Ilana, her little brother and their parents -- Jonathan, a CPA who now is helping his daughter with her political endeavors full time, and mother, Heidi, a drama therapist working with seniors with dementia -- toured Europe and Central America. She listened as locals talked with her parents about the U.S. war in Iraq: "I could see how it affected their countries, and it just made me so sad."

In December, her parents went to see Teresa Heinz Kerry speak in Oakland about her husband's then-struggling campaign; they came home and told Ilana how impressed they'd been. Then Ilana, who by then had taken the initiative to launch Kids for Kerry, met Heinz Kerry herself during a women's event in February in San Francisco; they hit it off well.

Days later, she met John Kerry, and the candidate told her his wife had spoken highly of her. Weeks later, Kids for Kerry had become a national phenomenon.

Her passion for the campaign is all-consuming; her birthday party in March became a door-to-door fund-raising effort in which she and her friends raised thousands of dollars for Kerry.

At the convention, she's scheduled to speak on the same night as Democratic Party luminaries such as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; former candidates Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt and Carol Moseley-Braun; U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and her buddy, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

"I'm practicing like 24/7," she said Friday as she fielded countless interview requests. "I didn't expect all this press and everything."

But despite the media maelstrom, she's staying on message "to try to tell everybody to just go out and vote on Nov. 2," and "how John Kerry can become our next president," she said.

Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com.