Clara Daly was sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles when she heard a worried voice over the loudspeaker: "Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?"
Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call button. An air hostess came by and explained the situation. "We have a passenger on the plane who's blind and deaf," she said. The passenger seemed to want something, but he was traveling alone and the air hostesses couldn't understand what he needed.
Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help blind and deaf people and she knew she'd be able to finger spell into the man's palm. So she rose from her seat, walked toward the front of the plane, and knelt by the seat of Tim Cook, then 64. Gently taking his hand, she signed, "How are you? Are you OK?" Cook asked for some water.
When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She came by again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.
"He didn't need anything. He was lonely and wanted to talk," Clara said.
So for the next hour, she talked about her family and her plans for the future. Cook told Clara how he had become blind over time and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she "looked attentively at his face with such kindness," a passenger reported.
"Clara was amazing," an air hostess told Alaska Airlines in an interview. "You could tell Cook was very excited to have someone he could speak to, and she was such an angel."
Cook's reply: "Best trip I've ever had."
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