Man Rescued By Country Star Changes His Tune

Most people never get to meet a Grammy-nominated singing star.

Francesco Maccarrone not only met one, he was rescued by one.

Maccarrone, 22, of Tacoma, Wash., then a baggage handler at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, was moving bags in the cargo hold of a McDonnellDouglas MD-80 jet last September when a co-worker accidentally shut the door to the hold.

He thought he was going to be trapped, banged around with the rest of the baggage on a flight to Reno.

The plane began to pull away from the gate.

“I started pounding on the door, but I couldn’t get anyone to open it,” Maccarrone said. “So I pounded on the ceiling.”

The cargo-hold ceiling turned out to be right under the seat of country-music star Trisha Yearwood, who heard Maccarrone’s pounding and called an attendant to investigate.

Thanks to Yearwood, Maccarrone was found and let out of the plane before it took off.

On Monday, Maccarrone, who now works as a delivery-truck driver, finally thanked Yearwood when the two met for the first time on the TNN cable show “Primetime Country.”

“I wasn’t much of a country music fan before,” he said. “But I am now.”