4 heartwarming travel stories

4 heartwarming travel stories

Hear four heartwarming travel stories we've heard over the years. If no. 2 doesn't make you cry, you're probably a robot!

1. How a mother lost in the chaos of travel was found

Cancelled. Cancelled. Canceled, Agnes Mwangale's travel story begins. It was 6 p.m. on April 15, 2010 and she had just arrived at the Toronto airport. As she scanned the arrivals board, her stomach churned and she realized that not everything was going to be okay, despite the promise she had made to her mother.

Volcanic ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull shut down Europe's airports for almost a week and stranded thousands of passengers around the world. Among them was Agnes' mother, Sophia Atila Kafu, who was stuck nearly 4,000 miles away at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

This would hardly be remarkable were it not for the fact that Sophia was 64 years old, had never been outside Kenya, never been on a plane, never been in an airport, spoke no English (only Swahili and Luhya), carried only 25 euros, and did not have a working cell phone.

By the time Agnes realized something was wrong, Sophia had already been stranded at Schiphol for 19 hours. She had some emergency contact information with her, but no calls had been made or received yet.

Realizing that her mother was unable to seek help, Agnes called the airline KLM to ask if they could look for her. The airline told her there was too much chaos at the airport and they couldn't locate a specific person. After several hours, Agnes left the airport and holed up in a nearby hotel, frantically watching the news.

When there was still no news the next morning, Agnes called the Kenyan embassy in The Hague and was put through to a Kenyan attaché who promised to drive to Amsterdam the next morning if Sophia was not found by evening.

Unable to rest, Agnes contacted her friends and colleagues at AIDS-Free World to ask for help. Soon people from Boston, Toronto, New York and San Francisco were working on a solution. Meanwhile, Sophia had been stranded for almost 40 hours.

One of Agnes’ friends, Paula Donovan, sent an email to her contacts titled “Really Need Your Networking Help!” It implored: “Do you know anyone who is stranded in Amsterdam, or do you know someone who knows someone who knows someone whose Facebook friends or Twitter followers might be there?”

This email landed in the inbox of an AIDS-Free World employee in San Francisco. Within minutes, it reached a lawyer in Washington, who forwarded it to another lawyer at the same firm, who then forwarded it to his father. It then traveled to an executive at Delta Airlines (a KLM partner) and then to another Delta manager in Atlanta.

Within two hours, the email pinged in the inbox of George Bougias, Delta's regional customer service manager, while he was eating dinner with his wife. At first he wondered if it was a prank to verify the number for sure.

Agnes answered the call and desperately reassured him that her plight was real. She sent him photos of Sophia and a few minutes later George was on his way to the airport. He and six security agents began searching the terminals, soon joined by a Jacqueline Wittebrood, who had received the message from a friend in New York, and her friend Fezekile Kuzwayo, who could speak Swahili. They combed through the terminals together.

It was approaching midnight and the team had almost completed their search when they noticed two lone figures in a secluded area near the airport casino. They walked over and picked up a blanket. There was an African woman among them, but at about 40 years old, she was too young to be Sophia. The group turned to the second bunk and peered under the ceiling.

“Mom Sophia?” Fezekile asked. Then in Swahili: “Your daughter sent us here.”

Sophia smiled, revealing a gap in her teeth just like the one in her photos. Mama Sophia had finally been found. Shaken but relieved, she explained that the other woman, a Congo native who spoke English, had taken care of her. They had tried calling Agnes but couldn't reach her number.

Four days later, Sophia arrived in Canada in time for Agnes’ college graduation. Surprisingly, the experience left her feeling more positive about flying. As upsetting as it was, the kindness of strangers taught her an important lesson: "You might have a problem," she said. “But as long as others know, it’s no longer just yours.”

Adapted from the original story in The New York Times

2. Fight to escape

“Last night my husband and I received the tragic news that our three-year-old grandson had been murdered in Denver by our daughter’s boyfriend,” Nancy’s letter to elliott.org began.

"He will be taken off life support at 9 o'clock tonight and his parents have chosen organ donation, which will occur immediately. Over 25 people will receive his gift tonight and many lives will be saved."

Shortly after this terrible news, Nancy booked tickets for her husband Mark to fly from LA to Tucson to Denver. “The ticket agent held back tears throughout the entire call,” Nancy wrote in the letter. "I'm actually her stepmother and it's much more important that my husband is there than me being there."

Unfortunately the trip didn't go as planned. Mark arrived at LAX two hours before the flight, but quickly realized that extreme delays in check-in and luggage would keep him from the flight.

Nancy's letter describes how he was close to tears as he begged the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and Southwest Airlines to expedite him. He explained that if he missed that flight he would never see his grandson again - but no one cared enough to help him.

A few minutes after the plane was scheduled to depart, he finally walked out of security, grabbed his luggage and, still in his socks, ran to his gate in hopeful desperation. As he turned the corner he spotted the gate agent. It was now 12 minutes past departure time, but standing next to the agent was the pilot of the plane.

“Are you Markus?” he asked. “We held the plane for you and we are so sorry for the loss of your grandson.”

Breathless and on the verge of tears, Mark collapsed with gratitude.

The pilot reassured him. "You can't go anywhere without me and I wouldn't go anywhere without you. Now relax. We'll take you there. And again, I'm so sorry."

3. A revelation on the bus

“I was sitting in the back of a bus in a little village called Watsi in Costa Rica,” begins Chase Adams’ story.

"There was a woman in torn clothes standing in the aisle in front. She was holding a red folder and talking to the passengers nearby. I thought she was selling stickers or skin creams.

A few minutes later I looked up and saw her walking down the hallway toward me. She was holding a plastic bag in her hand, and even though she had only passed a few passengers, the bag was bursting with money. I couldn't believe it. In my year and a half in the Peace Corps, I had never seen a bus salesman make so much.

When she reached me, I still had no idea what she was selling. Then the man next to me wanted to see the red folder she was holding.

As soon as she opened the folder, everything fell into place. There was a photo on one side and a document on the other. The photo showed a little boy with an incision across the width of his stomach. The document described his health condition. The boy was her son.

At that moment I had what can only be described as an epiphany. If I could somehow connect this woman with my friends and family back home, she would have the money to pay for her son’s medical treatment within a day.”

That moment was the birth of Watsi, now a global crowdfunding platform that allows anyone to donate as little as $5 to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people in need.

To qualify for Watsi funding, patients must have a medical condition that will severely impact their standard of living if left untreated. Treatments eligible for Watsi financing cost less than $1,500, have a high probability of success, and are financially out of reach for the patient in need.

In short, Watsi treatments are cost-effective and effective. And best of all, there are tangible results. When a patient has a successful surgery, all of their donors receive an update about it, making the difference clear and unparalleled in terms of the feel-good factor.

To date, 7,686 people have funded healthcare for 2,572 patients in 20 countries - and all because Chase happened to be traveling through a small town called Watsi in Costa Rica.

4. The man in 16C

All frequent travelers know the fear of sitting next to a child. You secretly hope it doesn't spend the flight screaming. They hope his parents know how to control it. You hope you get some peace and quiet.

Now imagine that you are the parent and you know that your child will scream and fidget and disturb the peace and quiet of others - not because you cannot control him, but because he has autism. Imagine praying silently for a kind old woman or other parent who might understand you.

And then imagine you get an important-looking businessman with a suit and a briefcase and a handful of documents instead. Imagine the silent fear as your daughter reaches over and strokes his arm, calls him “Daddy,” and won’t stop doing it.

This is what happened to Shanell on a flight with her 3-year-old daughter Kate, but as she writes on her blog, the passenger's reaction wasn't what she expected:

"You could have shifted uncomfortably in your seat. You could have ignored them. You could have given me that 'smile' that I despise because it means 'Please take care of your child.' You didn't do any of that. You engaged Kate in conversation and asked her questions about her turtles... I watched and smiled. I made a few polite offers to distract you, but you were having none of it.”

Shanell goes on to describe how her daughter refused to let the man rest. “The interaction went on and on and you never seemed annoyed.”

Things got even worse: "Just before we landed, Kate had reached her limits. She was screaming for her to buckle up, she was screaming for me to open the plane door, and she was crying and repeating over and over: 'The plane is closed.' You tried to draw her attention to her toy. She was too far gone at that point, but the fact that you tried to help touched me emotionally.”

Shanell continues, "In case you're wondering, she was fine when we got off the plane. Thank you for letting us lead the way. Kate felt overwhelmed and fled the plane and a big, long hug was all she needed. So thank you.

Thank you for not making me repeat those horrible apologetic phrases I so often say in public. Thank you for entertaining Kate so much that she had her most successful flight yet. And thank you for putting down your papers and playing turtles with our girl.”

I know the smile Shanell talks about — the one that says, “Take care of your child, please” — because I’ve shown it to parents before. I felt impatience and irritation inside, but I hope that next time I'm in a situation like this, I'll act with the same grace and understanding as the man in 16C.

4.5 The Sweeter Side of Reddit

I searched Reddit and Google for this story but couldn't find it, so I'll just have to give you a three-line summary from memory. When Japan was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2011, a Redditor posted that his mother was stuck in a Japanese province without access to food or water.

Another Redditor read the post. He was in Japan and put together a large food package, navigated all the way to the mother's town and knocked on her door to give her the package.

It was super heartwarming and sweet (words aren't often associated with the Reddit community), but I'm afraid I can't find the link, so this is only half the story. If you find it, please let me know!
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