Eight years may have passed, but one extraordinary moment of kindness at 30,000 feet continues to resonate.

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Back in 2018, a routine cross-country flight became the setting for a story that would capture hearts around the world after a teenage passenger quietly stepped forward to help a man who simply needed someone to communicate with.

What began as a request from a flight attendant soon turned into a friendship that neither passenger would forget, with the encounter eventually reaching millions of people online.

The incident took place on June 18, 2018, aboard an Alaska Airlines flight travelling from Boston to Los Angeles.

15-year-old Clara Daly was travelling with her mother, Jane Daly, after helping Jane’s mother move into a new home. Also onboard was 64-year-old Tim Cook, a deaf and blind passenger from Portland, Oregon, who was trying to communicate that he needed a cup of water and other assistance during the journey.

Unable to communicate verbally, Cook relied on sign language, prompting a member of the cabin crew to ask a simple question over an hour into the five-hour flight.

“Does anyone on board know American sign language?”

Clara had only been learning sign language for around a year, having taken it up to help with her dyslexia, but she didn’t hesitate.

“I wanted to help,” she told PEOPLE, “because that’s what people are supposed to do.”

She pressed her call button before making her way to the front of the aircraft, where she knelt beside Cook’s seat and began signing into his hand.

“How are you? Are you okay?”

That brief exchange quickly grew into a much longer conversation.

Rather than returning to her own seat, Clara spent time with Cook throughout the flight, learning about his life, his work and his family.

“He told me how he became blind — that it was a gradual thing that happened over time,” Clara said, noting that Cook had been in Boston to visit his sister. “He said that he’d once worked as a traveling salesman. We both have family in Boston, so we also talked about that, and he asked me what I wanted to do in my life.”

The pair discovered shared connections through family in Boston, while Clara also spoke about her own ambitions, revealing she hoped one day to run for political office and become a senator.

Looking back on the experience, there was one reason she kept returning to sit with him.

“He just needed somebody to talk to,” Clara said.

For Jane Daly, her daughter’s actions reflected the person she had always been.

According to Jane, Clara regularly volunteered at a local retirement home in Calabasas, California, and was already planning to start a sign language class alongside a friend for seniors who were hard of hearing.

“She volunteers at the local retirement home and plans on starting a sign language class with a friend to teach seniors who are hard of hearing,” Jane told PEOPLE. “In helping Tim, she doesn’t think she did anything special. She did what she believes any human should do.”

Although Alaska Airlines declined to comment beyond referring to a company blog post about the encounter, another passenger ensured the story would not remain confined to those onboard.

Lynette Scribner, 56, from Seaside, Oregon, witnessed the interaction throughout the journey and later shared what she had seen in a Facebook post.

She expected little more than a handful of friends to read it.

Instead, the post exploded online, collecting more than a million likes within days and introducing Clara and Tim’s story to people across the globe.

“I wrote about this, thinking I was just sharing a sweet story with my friends,” Scribner told PEOPLE. “Clara was so kind and genuine — she seemed to have no qualms about signing into Tim’s hands, and even though he couldn’t see her, she looked attentively at his face with such kindness.”

What stood out most, Scribner said, was how unexpected the gesture felt.

“You know, you kind of expect a teenager to be engrossed in watching movies or listening to music,” she added. “But she just stepped up and made herself available to assist Tim for the remainder of the flight.”

For Cook, the conversation transformed what had begun as a difficult journey.

After returning to the Portland care centre where he had been living since losing both his sight and hearing, he reflected on the encounter through a sign language interpreter.

“Clara made me very happy.”

“I was in a bad mood before Clara helped,” he said, “and she was very sweet and nice. She had very clear communication and we had a nice conversation. Best trip I’ve ever had.”

Despite becoming the focus of international attention, Clara remained surprised that such a simple act had struck such a chord with so many people.

“Everyone’s bummed out right now seeing so many bad things happening,” she told PEOPLE. “Maybe they just wanted to see something good.”

Featured image credit: Alaska Airlines