Paul Oberjuerge: Help Desk Hero

This is how it went down: We decided to write columns the same day we arrived, never a very good idea, and by the time we finished it was pushing midnight, Turin time. It was too late for Steve to get a bus for the three-hour ride up to his hotel room in the mountains. And I had never quite gotten around to clearing up my reservation status at the media village in the suburb of Grugliasco. To wit: They had me arriving on Friday. I had arrived on Tuesday.

My original plan was to just show up at Grugliasco, by cab, and see if I could talk my way in. Italians often are sympathetic if you seem pathetic, and a couple of aging, exhausted, unshowered sports guys were pretty pathetic.

Maura was alone at the Help Desk (which, yes, I criticized the day before). I showed her the phone number for Grugliasco that had never worked, and she found one that did, and got busy. She found the chief of housing, who called the chief of the Grugliasco village.

At first, they told us "no can do ... Why didn't you fix this before you got here." I acted pitiful. I tried, etc. It's too late to go to the mountains.

The whole time Maura was answering phones, looking up numbers, coming up with new ideas. And English isn't even her second language. Spanish is.

Finally, we got a call back from the housing director. They would take BOTH of us in Grugliasco for one night, and then let me in for the two more nights I didn't have a reservation for. (I've found, over the years, that Italians can/will bend the rules if they feel up to it. One of the things I love about them. I once talked my way onto a freight train in Naples, during the 1990 World Cup, but that's another story.)

Maura called us a cab, wrote down the phone number of the cab company, in case the one she called didn't show up, and just generally was patient and very helpful.

She's a gold-medalist, in our book. Grazie, Maura.