Update 2: Helix Grad Shoshana Hebshi Makes World News, a ‘Great Person’

Updated at 8:50 a.m. Thursday

A 1994 graduate of Helix Charter High School has landed in the center of world news after describing what she calls humiliating treatment at the Detroit airport on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Former Highlander student Shoshana Hebshi, the subject of 7,000 stories, said she was forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated at Detroit’s airport Sunday because of her Middle Eastern appearance.

Hebshi, 35, who lists her alma mater on her LinkedIn account, is a freelance writer, editor and stay-at-home mother of twin 6-year-old boys who lives in a suburb of Toledo, OH.

“I was minding my own business—sleeping, reading, playing on my phone,” she told The Associated Press.

At Helix High School, she was known as Shoshi and was junior and senior class president. She played volleyball all four years and was a softball team member her last three, as well as a member of the Oceanography Club and Highland League—a collection of club officers.

Monday, she described her experience on her WordPress blog—a 3,700-word narrative that spawned more than 600 comments in its first 24 hours.

On her blog, titled Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit, Hebshi wrote that she felt “violated, humiliated and sure that I was being taken from the plane simply because of my appearance.”

On her Twitter account, she tweeted early Tuesday afternoon: “Wow, so overwhelmed by the response to my post about my detainment Sunday. Thank you for all the well wishes, the week has been looking up!”

The Washington Post said Hebshi was overwhelmed by the response to her blog post, “and that for the most part, people reacted with kindness and support. She liked the dialogue it started, even if she hated what happened to start it.”

“It doesn’t make sense to operate in this way,” the Post quoted her as saying. “It fuels violence and it fuels hatred.”

The American Airlines flight, originating in San Diego, was shadowed by warplanes for a time. The FBI told NPR that the jets were scrambled for the Detroit-bound plane for the same reason as another that day in New York—“out of an abundance of caution.”

Agents found nothing during the search.

Stan Brewer, founder and editor-in-chief of InsiderIowa.com, employed Hebshi as a columnist in 2009, when she was a graduate student at Iowa State University.

He said: “She’s a great person and a great writer. ... Shoshana is a very good person, one of the best you’ll ever want to meet anywhere. ... I just think the world of her.”

Brewer, 55, said she’s one of the least threatening people you’d ever want to meet.

“It’s crazy she had to go through this,” said Brewer, who has talked to her since the Detroit incident. Her blog post got more attention than she expected, he said, but “she thinks it might contribute something to the dialog about racial profiling.”

Her column in InsiderIowa often contrasted her Iowa experience with her California youth.

“Growing up in San Diego, I attended the Del Mar Fair (now called the San Diego County Fair),” Hebshi wrote in August 2009.

“I thought it was a great fair—tons of rides, animal shows, cotton candy lining the main drag, photo booths in which to cram all 20 of your closest friends, chances to win the big stuffed dinosaur prize at some rigged basketball game, and lots of people and ensuing traffic. That fair was great. But it pales in comparison to the Iowa State Fair.”

Brewer’s photo of her, which illustrated her column, was picked up by many websites. But Brewer is miffed that few people contacted him for permission to use his photo.

Without asking his OK, “the Des Moines Register put it in their print version—ran it small size,” he said. “Not much ethics in journalism anymore.” (See story here.)

However, MSNBC’s website gave him a photo credit and paid for use of the photo, he said.

Hebshi was in Iowa because her husband, Kurt Hebshi-Holt, was in medical school there, Brewer said. The family moved to Ohio in July so he could complete a residency in Toledo, according to news reports.

Her former employer at the Iowa Department for the Blind told the Des Moines Register that Hebshi is “a lovely, talented young woman.”

“She is as American as I am,”  said Karen Keninger, director of the Iowa agency, quoted by the newspaper. “That she had to endure this kind of thing is an outrage. To think that we can trade liberty for security is absurd.”

Her father—Ali Hebshi of Bethany, CT—died in June 2005 after suffering from pancreatic cancer, according to his labor union website. The elder Hebshi received a political science degree from San Diego State University and did postgraduate work in sociology at UCSD

“A committed activist for peace and social justice, Ali worked as a union organizer for various labor organizations for 25 years, most recently for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America,” his obituary said.

The obituary also said:

His warmth and passion for life were contagious as was his belief that a more just and peaceful world is possible. To him, justice and peace were practices of daily life and not abstract principles. He cared deeply about the environment and was active in the struggle against pollution and the privatization of public water. He worked to end the war in Iraq and in support of the rights of Palestinians.

In an essay Hebshi wrote for interfaithfamily.com, she describes how her Jewish mother and Saudi father divorced when she was 5, “and are just now, twenty-one years later, able to have civil, at times friendly, discourse.”

Hebshi—sometimes called Hebshi-Holt in news accounts—added: “But they once loved each other very deeply, and I believe they still do on some level. They share an underlying understanding of the person underneath the Arab or Jewish skin they were born into and of the beliefs and values each holds because of their respective upbringings.”

In July 2009, when she was a graduate student at Iowa State University, Hebshi wrote:

After the news of Michael Jackson’s death wreaked havoc on social networking site servers, slowing connections and frustrating users, we decided to post a poll on our blog to track how people received the news of the pop icon’s death.
 
The results were a tell tale sign of the way people get their news in this information age we live in. The majority of respondents heard the news somewhere on the Internet. ...
 
I often fear rapid change. It takes me a while to get used to a new idea and accept it. But, I fear the fallout from the decline in newspaper readership.
 
I have an old-fashioned penchant for the printed word, for newsprint and for the belief that good journalism promotes democracy. I grew up in a house where the daily newspaper was picked through every day by every member of the family. I spent my college years learning to be a newspaper reporter. It’s hard for me to see this death knell on the horizon.

Shoshana is a granddaughter of Rose Leah Ruja of La Mesa, who died in March 2010 at the age of 97. Her online obituary said: “She was a generous and caring person who contributed to many charitable organizations. She maintained her membership in the La Mesa Democratic Club until her death.”

If you remember Hebshi at Helix, please comment below or write La Mesa Patch.