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Flight attendant marries work to passion

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- It’s a long way from the comforts of first class, but Nancy Rivard, a veteran flight attendant, found a way to marry her work to her passion: helping the less fortunate.

Rivard, who looks a little bit like the actress who played Wonder Woman, is herself a wonder. I traveled with her to El Salvador where she, and her Airline Ambassadors, are changing lives.

The concept is simple: Use the empty space on planes already scheduled to fly, and deliver aid donated by Americans. I went with her team of a dozen to El Salvador, where she’s quietly been working for a decade. It’s mostly flight attendants, who use their privileges to fly for free, and then, once on the ground, take the aid and give it to those in the most need. Rivard told me “when I started doing one thing a month that was real, I began to get interest first from flight attendants, and then from airlines.”

Convincing the airlines was the hurdle. Her donated aid means added weight and that added weight means great fuel consumption. Her first donation was under the radar. She collected soap, shampoo and other hotel freebies from her flight team and put them in a bag. Then, while on a trip to Croatia, she took the bag to a shelter for abused Bosnian refugees. Small gesture -- huge impact. Airline execs, who had first balked at helping, heard the soap story and realized the potential. First one airline joined, and then another. Today there are a dozen.

What surprised me most was that those who volunteer find the lives they change the most are often their own. Ruth Matranga went on her first Airline Ambassadors trip to El Salvador. She gathered school supplies, and other small trinkets from children at St. Mark Catholic School in Southwest Ranches, Fla. She then took the boxes to orphans.

But as I saw here standing there, holding hands and comforting infants, I realized her greatest gift was not in the bags, but rather that she’d taken time from her busy life to hold a child starving for something we all want: love and attention.

Interestingly, the Airline Ambassadors, who have touched 500,000 lives in 51 countries, are now expanding beyond just flight attendants. They’re recruiting folks from any line of work to join their mission.

Tara Hunnewell is a perfect example. She’s a singer and performer. She bought a ticket and joined the Airline Ambassadors in El Salvador. She wrote a song for the kids she met (click here to listen), and she left with what she calls a promise: “to do this again because it’s so easy. All you need is a few days out of your life.”

As a reporter, I usually am detached from what’s happening. My role is to report. But in this case, I was sucked into the efforts the Airline Ambassadors are making. I unloaded boxes, held children’s hands, talked with them, and even left with a drawing 14-year-old Ruth Abigail Ortega made of me.   

I believe Ruth Abigail's life will be every so slightly different knowing a stranger from a far away place stopped by one day to say, “I care.”

All photos by Kerry Sanders. From top to bottom, Nancy Rivard, Ruth Matranga and Tara Hunnewell in San Salvador. Above is Ruth Abigail Ortega's drawing of Kerry.

Editor's note: Later today, NBC News producer Mario Garcia will also blog about this story, as will Nancy Rivard herself. You can watch Kerry's full report in tonight's broadcast, part of our "Making a Difference" series.

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