One was a colorful set of plastic toy keys. The others were Adams' own keys, which he jingled loudly.

"Cami never took her eyes off the colored keys. She never turned toward the sound of jingling keys," her mother, Stephanie Garland, recalled. Subsequent tests revealed that she was profoundly deaf.

They said she wouldn't talk. They said she'd never go to a regular school.

But she did.

And now she's going to Yale.

It all started in Baton Rouge for the 19-year-old, who now lives in St. Louis, Mo.

As a baby, Cami was fitted with hearing aids and taken to the Baton Rouge Speech and Hearing Foundation where a therapist newly trained in auditory-oral education for the deaf worked with her once a week. Cami was just starting to mimic vowel sounds when the therapist moved away.

To continue therapy, Stephanie took her daughter to New Orleans twice a week and to Tampa, Fla., for a week every three or four months. Cami made little progress over the next couple of years, and after the birth of a second child, they were unable to travel back and forth to Florida.

After hearing about and visiting St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf in Chesterfield, Mo., which is dedicated to teaching hearing-impaired children to listen and to speak, the family decided to move. St. Joseph is one of 40 schools nationwide that specializes in auditory-oral education, and families from 41 states have relocated to the St. Louis area so their children could attend the school.

"It's such a wonderful school," Stephanie said. "Cami's first teacher, Barb Meyers, gave her the gift of language when she got her to understand that objects and actions had names and words. Mary Beth Dean, her next teacher, gave Cami speech and taught her how to properly pronounce words. Mary Lee Walters gave Cami the world, her appreciation for history and her love of reading."

After Cami finished second grade, her teachers recommended that she be mainstreamed, so she transferred to a regular school in third grade and graduated as valedictorian in sixth grade.

"My world changed in 1999 when I received a cochlear implant," she said. (A cochlear implant is an electronic device surgically implanted to stimulate nerve endings in the inner ear to receive and process sound and speech.) For the first time, she could hear the rustle of leaves, the swish of a dishwasher and the difference between the words "time" and "dime."

Even with the device, however, Cami still finds speech challenging. "I have trouble hearing over the phone. I do well talking with other people, but if a person talks too fast, has a strong accent or mumbles, then it's really difficult for me. I have to use a TTY (teletypewriter or text telephone) and special alarms, and I also have note takers in classes so I can pay more attention to the teachers. Otherwise, I don't find being deaf is very limiting."

As the only deaf student in a Catholic girls' high school, Cami said she worked for the school newspaper and was a member of the National Honor Society. She graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from St. Joseph Academy in Frontenac.

She returned to her first school to volunteer to work with hearing-disabled children on their language skills. "The children were so sweet, and it felt really good to be helping the same people who taught me as a child," she said.

Attending Yale University has been Cami's dream for more than a year. When she visited the campus in New Haven, Conn., last summer, she was impressed with the academic program as well as the school's office of disabilities.

"I'm confident because of all the obstacles I've already overcome, that I can make it at Yale and hopefully benefit the university's community by demonstrating that a handicap does not overshadow success," she wrote in her application essay.

Interested in ancient history, Cami wants to major in archaeology and do "hands-on research."

"I think it's awesome that my daughter is going to Yale," Stephanie said. "I think about those early years and how the world is open to her now. Her future is unlimited and I am so very proud of her."

Shirley Dauzat, Cami's grandmother who still lives in Baton Rouge, called the newspaper to brag on her granddaughter. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd tell her (Cami) to shut up," she laughed.

"That means my family doesn't have to worry about me not knowing how to orally communicate," Cami said about her grandmother's comment. "Being deaf does not need to be an obstacle in living a normal life, and deaf people like me are really just normal people except that our ears don't work."

By Laurie Smith Anderson