MCKINNEY, Texas — This week marked an annual event called World Hearing Day. The World Health Organization observance is an effort to raise awareness, prevent hearing loss, and promote hearing care around the world.
But for a family in McKinney, it's a day worth celebrating as a miracle -- every day.
In 2003, with WFAA cameras there to witness, Rebecca Capen, then in her 30s, had a cochlear implant turned on for the first time. Deaf her entire life, she decided, with her family's support, to give the technology a try. She visibly shook when a technician turned on the device.
"I never thought I'd be able to hear like that," Capen cried.
But in 2003, she was giving the technology a test drive for a very specific reason. She wanted to know first-hand if it would be a safe choice for her 1-year-old daughter Aliza. Diagnosed with progressive hearing loss, Aliza would eventually be completely deaf as well.
Aliza cried when the device was activated. The sudden noise scared her, but even in those first few minutes, she calmed down and began to adjust.
"She will have a much easier life than we did," Capen predicted in that 2003 interview. "She is going to take off."
And she was so very right about that.
Fast forward 19 years, and you can find Aliza Capen soaring in one of her favorite pastimes. She competes in quad motocross events. She has equal skill on a wakeboard. And, the gift of gab: her mom says she has that too.
"Yep. We call her the big mouth," laughed Rebecca Capen, in an interview this week at their home in McKinney.
"It's amazing," Aliza said, of her ability to hear and speak clearly, succeed in a standard public school education, and compete in the sports of her choice.
"And it just keeps getting better," she said.
She said most people don't know that she has cochlear implants for both ears.
"It was all I ever knew. It was the normal for me," she said, of the implants, and of being raised by deaf parents.
Aliza's father also opted to get cochlear implants that same year. And her younger brother Bruce, born with the same condition, received bilateral cochlear implants too. As a McKinney high school student, he also competes in the same motocross events with his sister.
"We did not want to limit them," Rebecca Capen said. "We wanted them to know they could do whatever they wanted to do."
"I think they definitely made the right choice, because it's helped me to become who I am today and it's helped me a lot," said Bruce Capen III.
"Because they knew the experiences they had to go through, and they didn't want us to have hard times," added Aliza.
"I know it was the best thing we've done for them. The technology was available for them. And it gave them the opportunities that I didn't get growing up," said Rebecca Capen.
But while cochlear implants changed the lives for the better for all four of the Capens, they know it is not for everyone. Some hearing impaired choose to rely on the beauty of American Sign Language, instead.
But for a college student planning to major in medicine, kinesiology to be exact, who keeps watching that video clip from 2003, Aliza is thankful her parents took a calculated risk for her and her brother.
"It's crazy to think that that's what started all of it and that their decision and signing off on the papers to do it led to everything after," Aliza said. "Best thing they did. Best thing!"
And that's all their parents ever really wanted to hear.
Click on these links to learn more about World Hearing Day and cochlear implants.