A 10-year-old Maryland girl who was born without hands just won a national handwriting competition.
Sara Hinesley doesn’t understand why it’s so remarkable that she won a national handwriting competition.
She paints and draws and sculpts clay. She can write in English and some Mandarin. When she learned to write in cursive this year, Sara said, she thought it was “kind of easy.”
Never mind the fact that Sara was born without hands.
Cheryl Churilla, Sara’s third-grade teacher said, “I have never heard this little girl say, ‘I can’t,’ She’s a little rock star. She tackles absolutely everything you can throw at her, and she gives it her best.”
Sara won the 2019 Nicholas Maxim award for her cursive handwriting. The award is given annually to two students with special needs — one for print writing, the other for script.
Sara has never worn a prosthetic. When she is offered help or a tool that might ease some tasks — like cutting paper with scissors — she rejects it,
Her mother, Cathryn Hinesley said, “She has this independent streak where she just knows that she can do it and she’ll figure out her own way. She is beautiful and strong and mighty just the way she is, and she just lives that way. She really does.”
To write, Sara grips her pencil between her arms. She says, “I like the way the letters are formed, it’s kind of like art.”