This week we present two stories from people who owe a debt of gratitude to somebody for their entrance into the science community.

Part 1: A chance meeting with a stranger on an airplane has a huge impact on Melanie Knight's life.

Melanie Knight is CEO and Co-Founder of Ocean to Eye Level Consulting which supports coastal communities around the world open public marine education centres. Melanie is also the founder and past Executive Director of the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium, a non-profit education centre in Newfoundland. Melanie had the opportunity to share her story of ‘bringing the ocean to eye level on the TEDx stage in Vancouver, November 2014. Melanie graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland with a BSc. in Biology and a minor in Business. For the past 10 years, Melanie has been working with the largest and the smallest aquariums in Canada fostering curiosity for the underwater world. Melanie worked at the Vancouver Aquarium as a marine educator and manager of volunteers. Melanie has since been recognized for her work environmental work with the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium becoming a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, receiving the Newfoundland and Labrador Environmental Award, TechGirls Portraits of Strength and the Canadian Network of Environmental Educators Award in 2014. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and K9.

Part 2: Joshua Adams-Miller has never seen college in his future, until he receives encouragement from an unexpected source.

Joshua Adams-Miller was born in 1989, in Sun Valley Idaho, to a family that has been in Idaho since 1873. He grew up in SE Boise under the care of his mother, who provided him more opportunities than anyone could ask for. However, he developed a sense of independence very early. Whether he was riding the city bus alone at 10 years old to get home from summer school programs or organizing large groups of friend to sneak out in the middle of the night, he’s always had a curious mind, and it wasn't beyond him to break the rules if it meant he got to learn something. He has always loved music and learned the viola and saxophone in school and self taught himself the piano and guitar. In his teens, he was sent to a jazz camp on a scholarship to hone his skills on the piano. Over his life, his curiosities have drawn him to the sciences repeatedly but by no means was it a clear path that brought him to his studies at Boise State as a Material Science Engineering Major. Like a sunrise, slowly illuminating the horizon, he realized that the best way for him to contribute to the future he wants to see was to bring to the world the materials that will make it possible.

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Melanie Knight

I’m 16 and I’m sitting on a plane going from Cancun back home to Toronto. My mother and my twin sister and I just got bumped up to first class for the very first time and we are super pumped. First class!

So my mother and my twin sister sit together and so instead, I have to sit next to a kind, gentle, old gentleman sitting there reading The New York Times.

We’re quiet at first and when the hot towel comes I start giggling with embarrassment and confusion, like what do I do with this? And he gives me this gentle little nudge of like, “Just wipe your hands with it.”

I’m like, “Thanks.” And that breaks the ice. We talk the entire flight.

He tells me about how he's a Wall Street investment banker and he lives in Connecticut. And I tell him about how I’m a high school student and I live in Elmira, like Mennonite town in Ontario. He tells me about his time in the war. He tells me about his grandchildren. He tells me about how he went to Yale. He tells me about how he loves marching bands, strangely, and he tells me about his life. I tell him about mine.

We couldn’t stop talking and we just had this amazing quick connection like you sometimes get with strangers. So at the end of the flight I asked if I could get his email because I wanted to keep chatting. He's cool.

So he says, “I don't have email. I’m an old-school gent. But, here, let me give you my phone number and address.” And he writes it down on the back of the American Airlines napkin.

Melanie Knight shares her story with the Story Collider audience at The Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, BC in October 2018. Photo by Rob Shaer.

His name is Tom Fitzgerald and he writes his name as the T kind of uniquely. Instead of a T like you normally write the ‘t’ he added like a little hat on top, like a little triangle top and then the bottom line.

So we become pen pals. He and I write each other regularly and sometimes we call. One time, he actually sent me a package and in it was a VHS tape of a marching band concert. And one time he calls me and, out of the blue, he offers to generously, yet modestly, contribute to my post-secondary education. I am amazed and confused.

“Tom, thank you so much for this generous offer but we’re okay. I have a big family but we’re fine. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression that that’s why we were chatting.”

“No, Melanie. That’s not it. I really believe in you and I also really enjoyed my university experience and I really want to make sure you get yours.”

So I talk with my parents about it. I’m like, “Should we accept this money?” Like oh, my goodness. And generously and graciously we accept his offer, and his secretary sends us a check.

As soon as I get my acceptance letter to Memorial University of Newfoundland, I sent him a copy of it I and sent him a big fat thank you. Then I pack everything up and I move to Newfoundland. At least I think I packed everything up. I did not pack the American Airlines napkin.

So I call my mom and I ask her if she might have it. Well, in the meantime she also had been packing up. She had moved everything up and moved as far west as she possibly could to the ocean to the west coast of Vancouver Island. She also didn’t keep anything that was nonessential so she did not have any of the letters and she, too, didn’t have the napkin.

Being a moronic teenager, I didn’t write it down anywhere else because it was a keepsake. I was supposed to keep the napkin. It stresses me out just thinking about it again.

So fine. I Google him. He must be online somewhere. This man doesn’t have email but he must be online somewhere. And there are hundreds and hundreds of Tom Fitzgeralds in the Connecticut area and none of them that I recognize.

So in my first year Bio class I think about him and like, ah, how could I have been so stupid? In my year two Genetics Lab, I think about him. Ah, pit in my stomach. How could I have been so stupid? In my year three Ichthyology class, he comes to mind again and I just curse at myself.

Every once in a while throughout my university career I try again. I Google him again. I think of him constantly and I tell people the story. I wonder how I’m ever going to get a hold of him again. In the meantime, what I should tell you is that in exchange for the contribution he gave me, what he did ask was for an invitation to my graduation. And my graduation is slowly approaching.

I go one last time. I got to see if I could find this guy. I go online, I search and search, and short of hiring a private investigator, I can’t find him.

My graduation comes and, regrettably, it goes without Tom Fitzgerald there. And so does life, life continues.

I move from Newfoundland back to BC, I get a job at the Vancouver Aquarium, I get married and I decide to move back to Newfoundland so that I can start the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium, Canada’s second catch-and-release aquarium.

The aquarium is doing awesome and second year comes by and I ended up giving up my position as executive director to somebody local and I move back to Vancouver with my husband and I continue working and doing whatever.

Four years go by and the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium is celebrating its five-year anniversary and my mother and I are going to be going back to visit. I think, “You know what? This is the time.”

I call my mom and I’m like, “Mom, I think this is it. This is my chance. I might have even missed it. He might not even still be alive. I have to find Tom Fitzgerald and invite him to the anniversary because at least that’s something.”

My mother knows how deeply impacted I've been by not being able to fulfill this commitment to him so she says, “Mel, do it.”

So instead of Googling Tom, I’m now Googling ‘private investigator Connecticut’. There are three in Connecticut. All three of them claim that they can find your cheating spouse but only one of them says that they can find a long-lost friend or loved one.

So I call John and I explain my incredibly strange request and I tell him the very little amount of information that I know about Tom. I tell him he went to Yale, I tell him that he works on Wall Street, that he lives in Connecticut, he has grandchildren. He's older, I don't know. Super old, I don't know. By now 16 years had passed and I tell him that he likes marching bands. Does that help? I don't know.

He asked me if I have a sample of his handwriting and I say, “No, I don't, but I do remember that he kind of wrote his Ts a little weird. He adds a little hat to the top.”

He goes, “Send me a picture of that and I'll see what I can do.”

Two weeks later I get a call. “Hello?”

“Melanie, it’s John. I found your Tom.”

“Oh, my goodness. How did you find him?”

“Well, I had to do some digging. I called a couple of people who weren’t your Tom and now their wives are mad at them, because they're not sure why some man is asking if they ever gave money to a young girl a couple of years ago. But I found your Tom and we’re sure of it. We sent your handwriting sample to his secretary and she absolutely said this must be you.

“He's going to call you in 10 minutes. Is that cool?”

“Oh, my God, yes. Oh, my God, okay.” So he's calling.

So I hang up and I’m like, “Okay. Oh, my goodness. Is he mad at me? I can’t believe I was never able to give him the invitation that he wanted. Oh, my goodness. Is he mad at me? Is he wigged out that I hired a private investigator to find him? Like what a strange situation. He must be so confused.”

Okay. 10 minutes. 10 minutes on the dot Tom Fitzgerald shows up on my phone. I pick it up and I’m like, “Hi, Tom, it Melanie Knight.”

He's like, “I know. Hello, Melanie. Nice to speak with you again.”

Oh, my goodness. I immediately apologized over and over again. I explain the whole story. I explain that I lost him and that’s why I had to hire this weird John guy to find him.

And he says, “Mel, you know what? I don't even remember giving you that money. I don't remember ever asking you to give me the invitation to your graduation in the first place.” He's like, “No big deal.”

Melanie and Tom share lobster at Tom’s favorite spot in Grand Central Station for Melanie’s birthday in 2019.

“It was a big deal, Tom. It was. You made a big impact on my life and I have been thinking about you for years. Please know that that was really important to me and I thank you so much for it. And the fact that I can’t give you the invitation to my graduation anymore, I would really love it if you could potentially come to the five-year anniversary of this organization that I started because of my degree, because of how you supported me in getting that degree.”

He said, “Well, let me check my calendar. Let me check. In June, let me see.” And he looks at his calendar for a second he's like, “To hell with it. I'll be there.”

So on June 17, 2017 Tom Fitzgerald is standing in the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium with a party hat on and a sea star in his hand at 85 years old. He looks to his left and there is a five-year-old girl who is also experiencing a sea star for the very first time in her life and they totally smile at each other and have this cute bonding moment.

That is the Return on Investment I wanted to show him. He finally got to see it.

While he was there, he also had a couple of other firsts. We got to show him his first iceberg, he got to see his first whale, he ate lobster, he met a fisherman with a peg leg. It was a great trip.

Tom and I now talk regularly and we have plans to go see him in New York in the spring. I can tell you that, now, I have Tom's full name, number and address written down in many different places.

Part 2: Joshua Adams-Miller

It was a beautiful spring morning and I was headed over to my girlfriend’s mom’s house for breakfast. She had decided that we should make banana pancakes because our favorite make-out song was by Jack Johnson.

We started cooking and it was a little surreal. It was a warm morning, beautiful spring. Everyone was getting up, getting ready for their day off, and my beautiful girlfriend and I were trying to tag-team some flapjacks.

At my house there was a legitimate anxiety any time someone was cooking that that house was going to burn down, so I was in a happy place. It was peaceful to me.

Once we had finished our breakfast, her mom said that she had to do her math homework before she left. I admired that because my mom worked a lot. She was out of town and so she didn’t really know when I had assignments or not. And so when her mom was asking her to do her homework I was like, well, that’s nice, I guess.

She ended up getting a little impatient, though, because she asked her mom for help and her mom was like, “Figure it out.”

I knew that her mom was the dean of Boise State somewhere and I was like that’s crazy. I thought if you had a dean for a mom you’d get math help, but I guess not.

But math was my best subject so I sat down and I started helping her. Soon as her mom saw that, she came up to me and she asked me like, “Are you going to go to college?”

I was like, “Probably not. I know my family can’t afford it and I know my grades aren’t good enough to get a scholarship so I don't know. I don't really think it’s in the cards for me.”

She's like, “Well, do you know the FAFSA is?”

I was like, “No.”

Joshua Adams-Miller shares his story with the Story Collider audience in a show presented in collaboration with Boise State at Jack’s Urban Meeting Place in November 2018. Photo by Lauren Branch.

She's like, “Well, it’s a federal government program that helps you gives you money for free to go to college.”

I was like, “Really? Okay.”

So she sat me down at the computer and she showed me how to fill out the FAFSA. It was like pulling teeth trying to get my mom’s social security number but we got it done. I filled out an application and it was a little surreal. I feel like a door just opened and I was terrified. I hadn’t really planned on it. I didn’t know what college was like. I didn’t have any sort of expectation and it was terrifying.

But what she didn’t know was that I was a bad student because I rarely turn my assignments in on time. And when I did it’s because I finished them in class and snuck them in the pile of papers when the teacher wasn’t looking. There's that.

Not too far after that, I was at her dad’s house. I liked going to have dinner with her dad because her dad was an interesting man. He was a DNA expert. He worked with the Innocence Project helping wrongfully incriminated criminals get out using forensic DNA evidence. It’s pretty amazing to me.

He also liked to asked these philosophical questions that made me think. There was one time he was talking about the dimensions of the universe and he mentioned a hypothesis that we are just brains floating in space and that reality is just a simulation. He asked me what I thought and I was like, “I don't know. I mean I've seen The Matrix but I don't really know what to think.”

He also asked me, “Well, are you going to go to college or not?”

I still wasn’t sure. The money made me worried and something was sapping my confidence and I wasn’t sure that it was.

In between bites of his spring mixed salad he's like, “Well, I've been saving some money for some time and I've been looking for an opportunity something like this. And helping you get through college is something I might consider,” and I was floored. I mean how could someone be so generous?

What if I failed? It’s hard enough to impress your girlfriend’s dad without taking money from him. And I just didn’t know what to say to that. I have a lot of pride and so I just thought about it but I didn’t give him an answer. We just moved on.

Later on in my senior year, my mom was out of town working and I was at the house by myself. My girlfriend invited me over to stay the night so I wouldn’t have to be alone. It was a secret sleepover, though. Her mom didn’t know about it.

It was easy to sneak into her house. The stairs were right by the front door and she was on the first floor in the back and so I would just park down the street and wait until she fell asleep and I would get the signal and I'd come up. My girlfriend would crack the door and open it with a beautiful smile and it was great.

This time, I was walking up the stairs, I got about four steps, “Who are you? What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out!”

I was terrified. Her mom’s silhouette just materialized out of nowhere and I was frozen. I couldn’t see her face, her eyes, but I could feel her burning a hole through my chest. I didn’t know what to do.

My girlfriend tried to say something and I just left. I went home. I was alone. I was scared. I didn’t know what had just happened to our relationship. I didn’t know if I was going to go to jail. I didn’t know if I was ever going to get to see her again. I texted her and I didn’t get any response.

Not until the next day and she said, “We can’t see each other until you go and meet my parents.”

It was a couple of excruciatingly long days until her parents asked me to meet them at Blue Sky Beagle and I was like okay.

I walk in, go to the shop, it was business as usual. People were talking, enjoying their pastries, laughing, pretty inappropriate for someone who felt like they're walking to their death. So I meet with them and they asked me to order. I’m like, “All right. Sweet. This is my last meal.”

We go outside and we sit down on the patio. Her dad was sitting next to me, her mom was sitting across from me, and I still shake from how nervous this makes me. But I was searching their face to see what was going to happen because I didn’t know. They were serious but I didn’t think they were angry, so I just sat there and soaked in my guilt and waited for them to break the silence.

They asked me, “What were you thinking?” I didn’t really have an answer.

They're like, “You're 18 now. Our daughter is a sophomore in high school. There are serious consequences for what you're doing. You can never do it again.”

The only thing that I could think was do I get to see her again?

Not too much longer, I was sitting at the park with my girlfriend and it was a beautiful spring day. I was holding her hand. I was very happy. It was nice. But I knew that we needed to talk because I was graduating soon. She had two more years of high school and I didn’t want our relationship to be torn apart by trying to force something that wasn’t going to work. And we broke up. I love the fuck out of her and between I love yous and my tears, it was hard.

The thought of college went away with the relationship. Soon after, I graduated, moved out. Moved in with a couple of my friends and we partied a lot. We were smoking weed, played videogames. There were eight of us in four apartments and there was only six apartments in this cul-de-sac so we had our animal house.

But it was unsatisfying for me. I mean, the year before I was a successful athlete, I was a talented musician, I was the ASPCO of my student council and here we are partying every day of the week and I was making sandwiches in a Mediterranean restaurant. I felt like I needed to do something more.

My roommate started selling weed and it made me uncomfortable but I didn’t really care. I mean, we all know weed is illegal for bullshit reasons but I figured as long as it’s something that helps him succeed and do something more than just survive then who am I to judge. What’s the worst that could happen?

Well, there was one Wednesday that I came home from work and there was a bunch of cars in the parking lot. I was like, “Oh, right. Another Wasted Wednesday.” That’s what we dubbed our party Wednesdays.

There were two girls walking up the door. The pizza guy was there and I got out of my car to go let them in. Soon as I grab the door to open it, I opened about two inches and it slammed shut and my roommate yells, “Go away. We’re not having a party anymore.”

I was like, “I live here. Let me in.” I was like, “This jerk doesn’t want to share his pizza.”

And I still had the doorknob turned so they couldn’t lock me out. I pushed again, got about an inch. This time I really tried, I forced my way in. As soon as I got my head in the door I was looking down the barrel of a 9mm pistol.

I froze, stood up. I didn’t know what to think. Do I grab the gun? Looks like he's waiting for me to do that. Is he going to shoot me? What does he want? I look behind him. All my friends were sitting on the couch hostage.

Once the tension starts to settle just a little bit, he demands my money and I still didn’t move, afraid that if I moved I would do something that I couldn’t take back.

He waves the gun in my face and he's like, “Get out of the door.” I move and I step aside.

He's like, “Sit down.” I sit and he runs out the door and gets in a black Mercedes and drives away.

After that day, I had this serious conversation with myself. I was like I know I’m smart. I know people expected more of me. I expect more of myself. So I decided that if I’m going to be lost and struggling, I’m going to be doing it trying to achieve something.

Now, here’s the good part. I made a lot of mistakes and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to be a good student. Now, I’m this close to getting my degree in material science engineering, I work in the technology development for a company that made $30 billion last year. And if there's any chance at all that I get to do what those people that impacted my life did for me, it’s all going to be worth it. Thanks.