I was looking at my daily statistics and noticed the huge jump in the number of unique visitors from the average of 110 to 328. That’s more than double the numbers! Evidently, Tara McAvoy is the reason for that quantum leap, so I typed “Tara McAvoy” in the Google search and to my own amazement, I came out third on the list, besting the websites like About.com, Fox7.com, and news8austin.com. Never in my wildest dream that my website would be ranked better than these news sites. A while ago, the New York Times Co. bought About.com from Primedia Inc. for about $410 million dollars. Heh, I feel like David versus Golitah.

However, nothing is to last forever, so I’ll probably lose my rank soon thereafter. One of the golden rules in news reporting or journalism is to report as soon as you can. Why? I received an “anonymous tip” from someone who’s also competing for the Miss Deaf America and learned that the culprit laid in Tara’s hands—her sidekick.

Here’s the screenshot below. :-)

Something sad happened recently.

Tara McAvoy on news.google.com

Tara McAvoy was an 18 years old who got hit by the train and died. She was recently selected as Miss Deaf Texas and would go to Palm Desert in California this summer.

With some investigation, it was discovered that Tara McAvoy was pre-occupied typing on her Sidekick. Sidekick is a mobile device that is very popular among Deaf users. Since there are a lot of tracks, she’d become used to having trains pass her, even a few feet away. But one particular train was carrying a large snow plow that extended over the deck. So, you can imagine what happened.

What can we learn from this is to be alert and pay attention instead of having our eyes glued on our precious sidekicks. It’s not worth your life.

News 8 Austin - coverage

Tara McAvoy, Texas