Most of the time I groan when I read stories about deaf people in the paper or similar media. It often is one of those feel-good “triumph over adversity” or “triumph over disability” stories, and all too often uses the term “hearing-impaired.” There was one published in the L.A. Times about a football player at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside a few years ago that got both a friend and me incensed enough to engage the reporter in an exchange over how to present deaf people accurately in the media (part of what we objected to was the cliché use of the words “silent” and “silence” in reference to the deaf. I wish I’d been able to transport the writer to Gallaudet University, where the deaf are *anything* but silent! Another one of our objections were references to ASL as “exaggerated” and “mime-like” and descriptions of a deaf voice as “guttural sounds.” Bleh.).

However, Mrs. Sandman alerted me to an article in the New York Times that appeared yesterday. It was an update on one of the Mexican Deaf peddlers found in the streets of New York back in 1997; these peddlers had been entrapped by other deaf people and used as peddlers to make a profit for their captors. The abusers were arrested and the peddlers given asylum. I’d always wondered what had happened to them.

Well, this article provides an update, of sorts, and a positive one: One of the rescued peddlers, Jose Gutierrez,  is now happily living in New York, and working as a janitor at the Statue of Liberty. The author of this piece focused rightfully on Gutierrez’s turn of fortune, and used the word “deaf” without further elaboration, instead focusing on the second chance Gutierrez got. It’s a nice coda to a sad story, and satisfied my curiosity.

Congratulations, Mr. Gutierrez. I wish you well, and I certainly appreciate the imagery of a freed immigrant working at the site of one of the greatest symbols of immigration and freedom in the world.