My husband Russ and I are the parents of a wonderful seven year old adopted Chinese daughter. This week we learned that our request for a second daughter has been answered and we will be flying to China in six weeks to receive eight month old Beckett Mei-Li. Anybody who has ever flown even one hour with a baby or toddler will appreciate how difficult a twenty hour flight with a child who barely knows you could be. Once you've read my story you'll appreciate why this is a love letter addressed to my sister, Erica and to Steve and Mindy, our angels at Aeroplan.
When Russ and I were married nearly four years ago, my sister Erica Ehm gave us the most delicious and unexpected wedding present. Let me preface this by explaining something you may not know about Erica – she is the queen of bargain hoarding. She’s got loyalty points from twelve different companies and will drive across town simply to shop somewhere that will offer three extra bonus points on a can of soup. I find this greatly impressive. I, on the other hand, cannot even find my one loyalty card in the morass that is my giant wallet and won’t ever try to recover a quarter that rolls under my car. Now – don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t mean she’s cheap. It means she’s smart - very smart. But I digress…
Back to the present (and the present). At our wedding, Erica offered up a tiny gift-wrapped box and my husband and I opened it expectantly. Inside was a small travel alarm clock with a piece of paper stuck in it that read “Aeroplan miles to fly Business Class to get your next baby”. Wow. My first thought was ‘how the hell did she collect that many Aeroplan miles’ and then I remembered she was a jet setting celebrity (I tend to forget that). Next I thought ‘holy crap!!!’ and I cried. A lot.
This wedding gift gestated for the next three and a half years until lo and behold, the time to collect on the present arrived. Russ and I received word that our chosen daughter, Beckett Mei-Li was waiting to meet us in China. We would be advised as to when we needed to travel to Beijing. Hubby and I knew that trying to score Biz Class Aeroplan tickets to China a mere six weeks prior to departure is a long shot at best. In fact, when I called Aeroplan customer service a few months ago to test the waters, the very nice agent kind of laughed when I asked about generally availabilities. “Madam", he said politely “People book a seat like that up to a year in advance”. Gulp.
Back I went to Erica (the jet setting celebrity) with a cry for help. She reached into her bag of contacts (and let me tell you – that’s one giant bag), and pulled out the name of Steve Allmen, General Manager, Business Development, Aeroplan. ‘Not bad’ I thought. A call went out to Steve who said that he would do his best when the time came.
The time came three days ago and with a vengeance. Not only did we get the green light to travel from our adoption agency, but we had only a very quick turnaround to inform them of our travel plans so they could start booking all of the internal travel and appointments. Add to that, we found a giant Air Canada seat sale that advertised Economy seats to China down to about $1000 – sale ending shortly. If we couldn't get those Biz class seats, we needed to know fast so we could benefit from the airline's announced specials. Crunch time had come. We called Steve.
This man, Steve - this virtual stranger (and complete stranger to me), literally flew into action. Back and forth he went, calling the Montreal office where Mindy Goldberg at Executive Customer Solutions took the lead, desperately trying to find us a direct flight so we could bring Beckett home in the lap of luxury. He tolerated my stressed out emails, my overt manipulation (I sent him a picture of the baby which I knew was 'dirty pool'). He listened patiently to my pleas and tales of woe. I even lied! I promised to name the baby, 'Steve'. (So sue me.) Steve laughed via email and good naturedly told me I was 'killing him'.
Lo and behold, this morning, I got confirmation directly from Mindy in Montreal that the deal was done. They had checked and double checked, looked under rocks, probably called in a few favors, and allowed themselves to be led by their hearts – and the glorious result was two return Air Canada Business Class seats to Beijing, including a lap seat in the name of Fu Li Zhuang (Beckett's Chinese name) which made me cry when I saw it.
Thank you Erica for your generous and smart present. I will never mock your loyalty point hoarding again. Thank you Mindy – Queen of the Deal and thank you Steve Allmen – the guy who had nothing to gain but good karma, and chose to go above and beyond the call of duty. Russ and I are sending you extra love and good karma. And thank you Aeroplan for having a program like this in the first place for people like us.
And when Beckett gets on that plane in Beijing and looks around, she’s gonna be thinking “WOW – Major score on the parents”. Little will she know that Russ and I may not have the big bucks, but we sure have the best people.
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