Columnist Susan Snyder: Unsung hero praised by mom

Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2000 | 9:39 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Sundays in Accent. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Someone ought to make a bumper sticker for Nikki H. Box.

It could read: "My kid saved a whole planeload of people."

But Box isn't one to boast. So few people will know that the Las Vegas woman's son blocked open the door of National Flight 19, allowing passengers to flee to safety after an armed hijacker commandeered the aircraft on July 28.

Box says she and her husband, George, were meeting friends for dinner July 27 to kill some time before picking up her son, Anthony Hendrickson, from the airport. He was scheduled to arrive around midnight on the National flight from New York.

They were getting dressed when the phone rang. Hendrickson was on the other end, which Box thought strange since he already should have been in the air.

"He said, 'Ma, you're not going to believe this. The plane was hijacked.' " Box recalled. "I asked if he was kidding, and he said, 'Are you crazy?! You think I would kid about a thing like this?!' "

Hendrickson regaled the saga that had begun less than an hour before. He and his friend Anthony Elezia were among 143 people waiting for their Boeing 757 to take off for Las Vegas when a 22-year-old gunman forced his way on board.

Hendrickson and Elezia, pals since childhood, were coming here to celebrate Box's 52nd birthday Aug. 1 and Hendrickson's 28th birthday, which is Saturday.

The hijacker ended all of that. He ducked into the cockpit and told the attendant to close the airplane door. But Hendrickson, Elezia and a handful of other passengers near the front had a different idea.

"They were going to get the hell off that plane," Box said.

Elezia cut his forearm forcing open the cabin door. He and Hendrickson ran out with the others, Box said. But as a flight attendant reached to close the door again, one of the women who had escaped screamed. Her two young children were no longer right behind her. They remained on the plane.

"Without even thinking my son went back in there to get those kids," she said.

With the gunman standing guard over the cockpit crew, Hendrickson wedged himself in the doorway to keep attendants from closing it again. The heavy door pinned him, but there was enough escape space for the children and other passengers.

"I just sat listening. I was in shock," Box said. "Just the picture of a guy with a gun sent chills."

The couple canceled their dinner plans and channel-surfed the rest of the night looking for news of the incident. One newscast showed Elezia, Hendrickson and the woman whose children he saved.

"When I saw that woman hugging my son, I cried," Box said. "She looked so happy. So relieved."

Pain lingers in Hendrickson's back. He canceled the birthday trip because he can't sit through a five-hour flight.

Box sent him a card, a check and the box of Corn Pops she'd bought as a special breakfast request. He sent her a veritable roomful of flowers.

But Hendrickson's unselfish act on behalf of one distraught mother was the best gift he could have given to his own.

"I'm just so proud of him," Box beamed.