Clara Daly was sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Then a flight attendant asked an urgent question over the loudspeaker: "Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?"
Clara, at the time, 1 the call button. The flight attendant came by and explained the 2. "We have a passenger on the plane who's blind and deaf," she said. The passenger seemed to want something, 3 he was traveling alone and the flight attendants couldn't understand what he needed.
Clara had been 4 ASL for the past year and knew she'd be able to finger spell into the man's palm. So she untied her seat belt, walked 5 the front of the plane, and knelt by the seat of Tim Cook, then gently taking his 6, she signed, "How are you? Are you OK?" Cook asked for some water. When it 7, Clara returned to her seat. The flight attendant 8 again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third 9, she stopped and stayed for a while.
"He didn't need anything. He was 10 and wanted to talk," Clara said. So for the next hour, that's 11 they did. She talked about her family and her plans for the future. Cook told Clara how he had 12 become blind over time and 13 stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she "looked attentively at his face with such 14," a passenger reported.
"Clara was 15, " a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in a blog interview. "You could tell Cook was very excited to have someone he could speak to, and she was such an angel. And Cook said it was the best trip he'd ever had."
