Above and Beyond

While travelling you necessarily interact with numerous service people: flight reservation agents, bus/taxi drivers, hotel workers, vendors, and an assortment of government agents. They span the entire range of attitudes from polite to indifferent to downright rude. Some will even try to rip you off. Very occasionally though, you encounter someone who is beyond merely polite and goes far out of their way to be helpful, without any promise of personal gain. They do it simply because of their sense of humanity and the goodness of their heart. I encountered such a person today.

I had to catch a 12:15 pm flight from Tortola which meant I had to take the 8:30 am ferry from St. John to Tortola’s West End. All well and good, but when I arrived at the ferry office (Inter-Island Ferry Services) the woman there informed me that the ferry boat had broken down and there was no ferry service that day. To emphasize this fact, she pointed out the disassembled engine parts laying out on the deck of the ferry. This was bad news. If I missed the flight it would mean spending another night in Tortola, buying a new plane ticket, changing my hotel reservations at the next island, etc. Now, she was certainly not responsible for the breakdown and there was no alternate ferry she could refer me to. So she was really under no obligation to help me further, and in most cases it would have ended there. But she must have seen the stunned look on my face because she asked me if I had to catch a flight on Tortola. I said yes and asked her what other options I had for getting across.

She then started working on other options. First she called the captain of another ferry already underway from St. Thomas if he could make an unscheduled stop in St. John to pick me up. He said he would try and see if it was possible. Ten minutes later he called back and said it wouldn’t be possible. She then checked the schedules for all the other ferries to see if there was some indirect multi-hop route that could get me to Tortola, such as going to St. Thomas first and catching another ferry from there. There were such routes available, but none that would get me there in time to make my flight. At this point I had almost lost hope. I was ready to walk over to the docks, waving $100 cash in my hand and ask anyone with a boat if they would take me across. This sort of thing works in many cases but it was unlikely to work here because it involves an international border crossing, and there is a requirement to go through customs, fill out an official manifest, etc. But the woman had not given up yet. She apparently had access to a small fast power boat. But there was some question about who had the keys for it. More phone calls to find out who had the key, where that person was, to send another person to track down that person, fetch the keys from him, and then go and retrieve the boat and bring it over here. By this time a few more people showed up, but she was clearly willing to do all this for me alone. She then got in and drove the boat herself singlehandedly (charging us only the standard fare). There was no one else around to help her. When we reached the other side she had to jump out of the boat and tie up on the dock herself.

I was so impressed with her helpfulness and thankful that I made it in time for my flight that I walked over to thank her specially. I handed her a $20 bill and asked her to please accept it with my utmost gratitude — but she steadfastly refused to take it! I told her that she deserved it for all the extra help and tried again to offer it to her but she still wouldn’t take it. She only smiled at me and said “Buy yourself a couple of drinks and enjoy the rest of your trip!”. So I did

For service Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, I am awarding this lady the Panini Service Medal of Honor: