ABOUT US - THE TOOTH FAIRY'S HELPER

My Story

I’m not just a “traveling tooth fairy!” I’m a professional flight attendant and my husband Tony is a pilot.  We’ve worked in the travel industry for more than 18 years and we are passionate about travel. After high school, I worked at a bank several years. But sitting at my desk 5 days a week from 9 to 5 was slowly sucking the life out of me!

One day I called in sick because I had an interview for a flight attendant job. I was hired and started training the following week. I was so excited! With my new job, I became an independent adult and my confidence grew because of meeting so many different people – every one of them with an interesting story to tell.

I met Tony in 2003. Shortly after we began dating, we took our first trip together to Belize. That trip was when I knew we were great travel partners. I was so lucky to have found someone who shares my same travel style and has the same desire to explore and have adventures. He’s also a great photographer which means he has captured so many of the fantastic moments and locations of our life travels together.

Since that first trip, we’ve traveled to more than 50 countries and already have a lifetime’s worth of memories. We send ourselves post cards from each country with trip highlights and funny things we’ve seen or heard to remind us after we return home. I started collecting coins just for souvenirs long before I decided they could be tooth fairy coins and before I invented the tooth fairy gift sets.

A few of our travel highlights have included:

• Gazing at the Sistine Chapel until our necks ached
• Walking on the Great Wall of China
• Drinking Glüwein in Germany during Christmas
• Horseback riding in Argentina
• Eating the BEST pierogies in the world in St. Petersburg, Russia
• Touring Windsor Castle and listening to the men’s choir sing in St. Georges Chapel in England
• Shopping in the souks in Dubai
• Being in a wedding in Punjab, India
• and parking our rental car next to a tour bus to use its free wi-fi while we dried our pants with the car heater after sightseeing in a rain storm in Iceland.

We have made great friends during our travels

• A fun couple in Zagreb, Croatia after a U2 concert
• A British Airways flight attendant we sat next to at the U2 concert at Wembley Stadium in London, England (we were groupies that summer)
• and a Swedish couple we met in South Africa when we were both on our honeymoon.

We live simply so we can travel often. We use Airbnb as often as we can. We love meeting the hosts and getting the knowledge of the country we are in from a local.

In New Zealand, we couldn’t decide if we should take a fjord tour or the glacier tour. Our Airbnb host suggested we talk to her pilot friend about renting an airplane and piloting our own tour over the lakes and glaciers. We did and it was the highlight of our trip.

When we were in Vienna, Austria we asked our host if she could recommend seeing either the symphony or choir. The tickets were expensive and we could only afford to attend one. She told us that she had just read in the local paper that both the choir and symphony would be performing at a benefit concert that night for a fraction of the normal ticket price.

These are just a few of the amazing travel adventures that Tony and I have had. We’re very fortunate and have worked hard to have them, but we never would have done this if we hadn’t both had our eyes opened to a wider world and great possibilities when we were young. I wasn’t a great student in school but travel has opened up my world and the world had become my classroom where I continue to learn.

I created Passport 4 Change and became the “tooth fairy’s helper” because a simple coin represents so much. The tooth fairy idea and gift kit was a fun and easy way for me to inspire the dream of travel in children (and parents) and to make the world a little better by helping everyone – young and old –  to better understand other people, their cultures and traditions.

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” -Albert Einstein