We arrived in Newark. Customs was easier than expected. The majority of people on our flight were Dutch, so the citizen line was short and moved quickly. Miah was flagged as her face didn’t scan to match her passport.  We were through surprisingly quickly, but navigating past there was difficult.

There was a lack of signage.  We finally found a United Airlines representative and we made our request to fly standby on an afternoon flight.

I explained our situation; the rep looked us up and informed me that we could not fly standby on an earlier flight.

“But they are both United flights, and we just got off of a United flight, and we know there are 9 empty seats.”

“I’m sorry but you have to fly the flight that you purchased.”

“Is there anything we can do to get on the flight this afternoon”

“No.”

“There’s absolutely nothing we can do to be able to fly standby on the 2:00 flight?”

“You can buy 4 new tickets.”

This ticked Daniel off, and he said, “Fine, where do we buy the tickets.”  She sent us off to find the United Counter (but failed to tell us it was in a separate terminal.)

By the time we found United Airlines counter we were tired and frustrated. (We had been up since 6am Amsterdam time, which was 11pm the day before in Memphis).

We were tired, frustrated with the airline rep and frustrated with each other when we finally found the domestic flight reps for United Airlines.

We got into the only line we saw open – the baggage check line. Before we were seen, we left that line to another line that wasn’t technically open but had three women sitting each at a computer chatting among themselves.

“Excuse me, I am so sorry to interrupt but could someone please tell us who to talk to about flying standby on an earlier United Flight. We just got off of our international connecting United flight and was hoping to catch an earlier flight home.”

“What’s your name?” says one of the ladies and starts typing after I reply.

I was hoping to find a man because I felt like I would be more likely to have success with a man. But out of the three ladies, only one responded, so at least we were being helped by the friendliest.

While she’s looking us up, I start telling her our story. Heavily emphasizing the tired-family-long-trip-who-are-lost-and-confused…. which was an easy part to sale, because it was true. The lady is clearly Italian, one could see it in her face and her mannerism.

I immediately regret my decision made 7 years ago to remove the large Italian-mole from my face. I hope she can tell I’m Italian too – probably a distant cousin.

“Come here Miah Inez.” I say to Miah using her middle name, in hopes that Inez is an Italian name. The lady looks up from her computer and remarks how cute the children are.

She finds the afternoon flight to Memphis and sees that it has plenty of empty seats. She jokingly says, “You don’t want to stay in Newark?” and Daniel replies, “I’m sure your city is beautiful, but we’d really like to go home.” The exchange was cute and lighthearted.  But then her facial expression changes.

“Why did you buy these tickets?” she asks me in a disapproving Italian-American-mother sort of way.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t told about the 22-hour delay when we bought them.”

She puts her hand on her forehead and sighs.

“I didn’t know what I was doing.” I desperately add.

I pick up Miah and put her on my hip.

She shakes her head back and forth and sighs loudly again, but then starts typing back on her computer like she’s going to help us.  Then she stops. A stern-looking gentleman has seated himself next to her.  She says to him, “What do you think?” while signaling to the computer screen. He keeps his stern eyes focused on her and just lifts an eyebrow.

She is clearly having an internal struggle with what to do with us.

Samuel starts whining about something and I say, “It’s ok Sammy, I know you’re tired, just hang in there a little longer,” without having any idea to what he was actually whining about.

Then finally this sweet angel says to me, “well it looks like it is going to storm tomorrow, and I would hate for you guys to get stuck here. I’m going to get you on an earlier flight to avoid the storm.” Then she looks up at me and says, “But I have to tell you to never buy economy tickets again.”

“Yes m’am” then I ask, “What is your name?”

“Sandy,” she replies.

I take her hand and say, “Sandy, thank you so much for helping us. Tonight when you go to bed, go to bed knowing you help this poor family get home so that they could sleep in their beds tonight.”

She printed off our boarding tickets and sent us on our way.

She was a Godsend. Because of her, I will choose to fly United Airlines in the future. I’d love to send a note to the airlines about how wonderful she was, but I’m afraid that what she did was against policy. 

I love her. She did what was right. United lost no money – the flight still had 3 empty seats on it.