Wendy Quintana is a flight attendant who travels the world. It's not what she does for a living that makes her worth reading about.

It's what she does during her layovers.

She volunteers at an orphanage in Accra, Ghana.

"It's boring to sit by the pool all day," she said. "You can't do that for two days. Then this job has no purpose. Layovers get boring. Volunteering takes the edge off the loneliness. When you're working, you're on, on, on. Then you're down. And alone."

There's another reason Quintana is intent on helping the OSU Children's Home in the West African nation - a very small reason. His name is Daniel. Quintana guesses he's 3 years old.

"The other kids swarm you when you show up," she said.

Daniel held back when he first saw Quintana.

"Daniel is super shy. He doesn't talk much," she said.

When she sat to take a break, he climbed onto her lap.

"He wouldn't leave. He must have sat on my lap for two hours," Quintana said. "He just wanted to be held."

Daniel touched her heart so deeply that she considered adopting him, but government regulations prohibit it. So she's waiting for paperwork to get approval to sponsor him as a student in Ghana.

Each child's story at the children's home is tragic. They're orphans. Or they have one parent or both parents who are HIV-positive. Or their parents are unable to feed them.

"The mortality rate is high," Quintana said.

Quintana, 33, and other flight attendants take bags of clothing, nonperishable food and school supplies. They talk with the kids once they arrive. They jot notes on what's needed.

Quintana, an Arvada native, became a flight attendant in 1997 for the same reason a lot of young people get interested in the job - they get paid to travel and see the world.

"Once you get started, it really gets in your blood," she said.

Her family started out in north Denver, and Quintana wanted "to try to reconnect a little bit," she said.

So she took a break two years ago and accepted a job as a waitress at Patsy's Italian Restaurant in north Denver. She still works there when she's home and they need her help.

She's also going back to school. She studied nursing - enjoyed the science part, but not the rest. Now, she's thinking of becoming a paralegal.

After her break from flying, she went back to work in the air. Another co-worker persuaded her to volunteer at an orphanage in Pretoria, South Africa, during a layover on a flight to Johannesburg.

She was talking to yet another colleague about her volunteer time in South Africa, and was invited to join in at the orphanage in Accra on her current route.

She found out volunteering is as much in her blood as being a flight attendant.

And she has the same attitude about volunteering as she does her job.

"I like to be of service," she said.

massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

Helping hands

Wendy Quintana's colleagues have set up a Web site about the volunteer work they do in Ghana: skyoflove.org.

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