In a sweet and kind gesture, Google has granted the wish of a 97-year old grandma through Wish of a Lifetime. Olive Horrell was on a special VIP tour of Google's Mountain View campus drawing shrieks of happiness and fascination from the 97-year old.
Olive Horrell grew up in a farm in rural Montana without electricity and indoor plumbing and when she was a little girl, she dreamed of becoming an engineer which her father discouraged saying they never hire a woman. She moved to California at age 8, lived through the Great Depression and witnessed the changing of technology throughout the years as reported in CNN.
Wish a Lifetime is a non-profit organization that grants wishes to seniors and made Olive's dream come true. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is one of Wish of a Lifetime's biggest individual donors. It actually took her three years to decide but Olive finally settled on her wish: She wanted to see the future.
During the onset of her tour, Olive took a ride on one of Google's self-driving cars. She was more than impressed by her visit to the Google Doodle Department where she created her own custom Doodle using a stylus on a touch screen computer.
An amazed Olive also held the Google Cardboard virtual reality for the first time. "This is old fashioned stuff! Way before your time," she says. As soon as she puts on her headphones and viewer, her jaw drops and she spun around in her wheelchair while excitedly shouting and pointing at things she can see. She was momentarily speechless when the virtual reality tour was done.
"There's no way I can understand that," she says finally. "The horse. I was so sure I could touch the horse."
Google employees were delighted in surprising Olive. Some of the "Greyglers", older Google employees, joined Olive for a sit-down lunch at one of 22 on-campus kitchens that feed Google's 20,000 local employees.
She was equally flabbergasted when she watched Google Photo face detection figured out a baby photo was the same person as a thirteen year old.
"Push a button and you have history right in front of you," she said. "This is very mind-boggling for me."
Watching Olive was equally amazing for Google employees as they were able to witness someone see modern technology through fresh eyes. A little reminder how magnificent technology really is.
Wish of a Lifetime founder Jeremy Bloom did not pass up a trip to Google to meet Olive. The founder was said to be inspired by his own grandparents. And this is the highlight of Olive's visit, thanking the person for his act of kindness
"You're such a gentle soul, it's just been lovely to meet you," an emotional Olive told Bloom, holding his hand. "Most of the time we aren't seen, as you know."
"Certainly in my wildest dreams, I couldn't conceive of what I saw today."
