Intel finalist brushes aside her disability

Michelle Hackman was born with sight in only one eye. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, she began to lose even that.

Her last memories of that time were the frantic radio reports about the attacks on the World Trade Center as her parents rushed her to the doctor. She doesn't remember how she felt a few days later when, at age 8, she lost all sight.

She does know that she is happy with who she is: "I've never, ever once said, 'I wish that my life were different.' "

That became easier to understand last week when Hackman was named one of 40 finalists nationwide competing for $630,000 in scholarships in the prestigious Intel science contest. Her project: How teens react when separated from their cell phones.

Just don't ask her, "How do you do it?"

"There's the implication that your life must be so terrible, and that's a bit offensive to me," said the 17-year-old senior at John L. Miller Great Neck North High School, where she sails confidently through the hallways, her white cane smoothly advancing her steps. "I just feel like I'm a normal person, even when it comes to the Intel contest."

Her normal: She was admitted by early decision to Yale University, where the self-described news junkie will study political science and psychology. She loves Twitter, constantly listens to her e-mail (with software that reads the messages aloud) and hangs out with her friends. She is going to be an intern this summer at the New York Post, where she wants to cover hard news.

Says one teacher: 'Remarkable'

Her teachers regard her with respect bordering on awe.

"I've seen very few students with her personal and intellectual courage," said social studies department chairwoman Susan Babkes. "Just the things she forces herself to do are remarkable, just remarkable."

One of the only times Babkes ever saw Hackman upset, she said, came when the teen was given a small role by the other girls in a choreographed dance performance planned for an alumni event.

"She said she did not want to be a burden," but also didn't want to be pushed to the side, Babkes said. "We arrived at a compromise, and increased her role. The number worked and everyone benefited."

Other things can bother her. Such as when people who seem to think she's helpless offer her unneeded assistance on the street. Loud parties are disorienting. It takes her longer to finish her schoolwork and she is annoyed if people think her disability wins her "unfair advantage."

But the Great Neck teen admits to one advantage. Because she has two prosthetic eyes,"I get to choose the color when I get new ones every five years." Born brown-eyed, she prefers the green eyes she has now.

She had a congenital condition called coloboma, in which the eyes fail to develop normally before birth. After Hackman woke up the morning of 9/11 before the attacks with blurred vision in her one sighted eye, she was totally blind within days.

Parents' fears were eased

Her parents, Sarah and Daniel Hackman, who immigrated from Iran in 1979, escaping the revolution, also have two older sons. When her daughter lost her sight, "I was so scared she would be upset," her mother said. "But she was happy and doing well, and little by little we felt better."

Michelle Hackman said, "I don't remember it being traumatic. It might have been, but I don't remember. My sight was never fabulous." Blindness is "white noise" in her life, something she rarely thinks about even as she unfolds her cane.

She is fluent in four types of Braille (English, French, math and music), and uses screen-reading software to hear textbooks downloaded to her computer. Her home printer prints Braille, but she carries only a simple laptop to take notes in class.

She does accept help when needed. Student volunteers sometimes serve as readers. Ten student assistants helped conduct testing for her Intel project.

And friends and teachers easily slip their arms through hers as they walk down the halls. Her best friends, Alexandra Ainatchi, Annie Kirschner and Alex Salm, all 17, make jokes about the cane they call Johnny (playfully after John McCain, the Arizona Senator.) "We say she's Teddy Roosevelt: She laughs loud and carries a big stick," Ainatchi said.

On the day Hackman learned she'd been accepted to Yale, she declined Salm's suggestion to skip school the next day.

"I thought it would be really bad precedent for the girl who just got into Yale to say, 'I don't want to go to school anymore.' "

For all her seriousness, she is able to easily laugh at herself.

"I'll get into this discussion about texting addiction and how we have to put a stop to it," Hackman said, "and then a second later I'll pull out my phone to check my e-mail, and say: 'Oh, this is so ridiculous. I'm describing myself.' "