Kind 15-Year-Old Helps Deaf and Blind Man on Alaska Airlines Flight

She made it easier for him to communicate.

A kind teen made an airline flight a little easier for a blind and deaf man flying alone. 

Clara Daly, 15, was traveling with her mother from Boston to Los Angeles on Alaska Airlines earlier this week when she used her sign language skills to help establish better communication with Tim Cook, who was flying home from visiting his sister.

During the flight, flight attendants asked over the intercom if anyone knew sign language and that’s when Daly stepped up to help. 

“Clara was amazing,” an Alaska flight attendant said in a press release. “You could tell Tim was very excited to have someone he could speak to and she was such an angel.”

A woman aboard the flight, Lisa Scribner, captured the special moments between Cook and Daly as the teen sat kneeled beside him on the ride.

“I observed a woman signing into a man’s hand, so he could feel her words,” said Scribner. “He was able to 'read' her signing and they carried on an animated conversation.”

Scribner said in a Facebook post that passengers onboard were all smiling and enjoying Cook having someone to talk to. The post has been liked more than 100,000 times.

Daly said she’d been studying American Sign Language for a year.

“I sat with Tim a few times on the flight and toward the end for about 30 minutes,” Clara Daly said. “He just wanted to talk.”

As for Cook, a service provider from Brookdale Senior Living met him at the gate after the flight arrived in Portland. He says the flight was the best trip he’s ever taken.

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