a few good airline agents

So some family and friends chipped in to fly my daughter and I east for the holidays. Like so many west-east travelers this christmas season it was a harrowing near-miss event. Ticketed for 7am the day after christmas we arrived at the terminal curb to see dozens of people leaving the terminal, cell phones glued to heads. After I hauled our luggage onto the curb, a cellphone-to-ear man asks if I'm heading east, then says, "yeah me too, all the east coast flights have been cancelled. there's a storm." Undaunted, I left mother, daughter, and bags on curb and rushed inside. A very kind man gave me a slip of paper with the 1-800 number to call for rebooking. Loads of people were in a rebooking line, but the agent advised me to go home if i lived here cause no one was going anywhere today. Back at home with my weeping daughter who is sure WE WILL NEVER EVER GET TO GO MOMMY, I start calling the 800 number, after 90 minutes of busy signals, I stumbled upon a glitch in the system (my secret sorry), that puts me directly in contact with  a real live human being who immediately books me for the same flight tomorrow. Done. So, at 5am the next day we get up and hustle to the airport, bags never left car trunk. Upon arrival, the curb agent tells me it is too late to check in, I rush inside, leaving mother, daughter, and bags again. I see the same agent (Carlito) from the day before. Of course I'll check you in he says and ushers me over to kiosk check in. Big red letters blink out at us CHECK IN CLOSED, NO TICKETING AVAILABLE. I'm sorry he says, you needed to check in 45 minutes before departure. But I was waiting in line outside in time, and he couldn't do it, etc, etc I say. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you he says. Just then my daughter comes running in, bags and coats flying, "can we go mommy, can we go?" I looked Carlito in the eyes and pleaded, "please, please, I know there must be something you can do, you  saw us here yesterday, this is our only chance to see our family out east, we'll do anything, sit anywhere, oh please help us." And Carlito did something. He brought us to a different ticketing agent and told her to put us on our flight. She says we can go but no time to check in our luggage. We'll go without it I say! I throw the phone at my daughter instructing her to call grandma NOW and tell her to come back for the luggage. I drop to the floor and unzip the monster bag, looking for necessities to stuff in the carry on, socks and underwear are flying everywhere as I frantically stuff things in, deodorant, pjs, underwear, hers, mine, ok, one sweater each...now the lady agent is standing over me saying, now, you have to go now if you're going to make this flight. She's grabbing random clothing items and stuffing them back in my bag, She's zipping my bag up and putting me together. I'm ready. I'm ready. My mom will be here for the bag. You can't leave your bag unattended she says, but you need to be escorted to the plane now. But what to do? And then this wonderful agent says she will stay with my bag and wait for my mother and she instructs another agent to get us to the plane.....and you know what? we got on our plane. And we were the only flight that made it out to our destination in day 2 of that east coast blizzard. The man sitting next to us said he was surprised we were able to rebook for the next day, a friend of his whose flight had been canceled yesterday as well has spent 9 hours on hold and got rebooked for 3 days later....