The teen who had his life saved thanks to his Apple Watch heart monitor has received a brand new iPhone 6s and — more importantly — an internship with Apple next summer.
17-year-old football player Paul Houle says he was recovering from his recent medical emergency when he received a very special call from Cupertino.
“I got a phone call from a California number, and [the person on the other end of the line] said ‘Hello, my name is Tim Cook, CEO of Apple,'” Houle says.
We covered Houle’s remarkable story when it first broke. After his Apple Watch heart monitor gave him unusually high readings, he sought medical treatment — only to be alerted that he was suffering from rhabdomyolysis, a syndrome linked to muscle injury.
“At the hospital, they told me that if I had gone to practice the next day that I would have lost all control of my muscles, and there was a good chance I would have fallen down on the field and died right there,” Houle said, soon after. “I’m very grateful for that heart rate monitor.”
It’s easy to cynically write off Apple’s offer of a new phone and internship as a marketing stunt, but the fact is that without the device there’s a good chance Houle might not have been properly diagnosed until it was too late. Based on the fact that Apple interns reportedly earn $7,000 per month plus benefits, he’s also in for a lucrative summer next year.
On top of this, it’s an extra-classy move of Tim Cook to personally make the phone call.
Like Steve Jobs before him, Tim Cook has often demonstrated this one-on-one approach to fans and Apple users. His email address ([email protected]) is public and there are multiple stories of him responding to those who email him. During his 2013 address at Auburn University, Cook commented that: “I receive hundreds of e-mails from customers every day, and I read them all.” As well as reading the news, too.
Where does he find the time? And don’t say “On his Apple Watch.”
Source: San Francisco CBS Local
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “Tim Cook offers fan an internship after Apple Watch saved his life”
Wow! Congrats to the kid!
And… $7000 a month????? I’ll slide down to intern for that…
I’m not sure how this incident made him worthy of an internship at Apple but I’m happy for him just the same. He’s certainly having a streak of good luck. $7K a month to me is a fabulous salary for any teen, or adult for that matter. I’ve heard this story repeated quite often even on local news. I didn’t bother to get an AppleWatch because I was under the impression that all of the body sensors weren’t enabled as of yet, so I was going to wait until they all worked as had been planned. I thought the software wasn’t ready or something like that. Maybe I’ll just wait for the next version of AppleWatch and everything should be improved at that point.