Teen Girl Helps Blind, Deaf Man by Signing Into His Hands on Alaska Air Flight

KIRO reports a teenager, Clara Daly, helped a blind and deaf man communicate on a recent Alaska Airlines flight, and the story went viral thanks to a fellow passenger's online posting of the interaction, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . The passenger, Lynette Scribner, said the man, Tim Cook, was going home to Portland's Brookdale Senior Living after visiting his sister. When a flight attendant asked if a passenger on board knew American Sign Language, ASL student Daly, 15, rang her call button. When Daly found out Cook could communicate only if someone signed into his hand, she went to help. Cook asked Daly questions and she sign-spelled answers into his hand. Daly learned ASL because she suffers from dyslexia, and it was the easiest foreign language for her to learn. "Clara was amazing," said an Alaska Airlines flight attendant in the news release. "You could tell Tim was very excited to have someone he could speak to — and she was such an angel." After the plane landed, Cook met a service provider from Brookdale Senior Living at the gate, and said the flight was the best trip he's ever been on.