When he was 3, he showed up to a TV studio with a pacifier and captivated a national audience, playing the piano with a fluency and poise that belied the sight of a tiny boy whose shiny black shoes didn't reach the ground. Short on money and speaking little English, his family relied on supermarket gift cards donated by a church, and the young pianist played at the Brownstone banquet hall to help pay the bills. "A rare talent," said Robert Aldridge, a Grammy Award-winning professor at Rutgers who is advising Molina's Ph.D.