Quigley has been a sign language interpreter for the hearing impaired for more than 26 years. The last 15 years have been spent as the owner of her own sign language interpreting company, Carrie Quigley and Associates Inc.

A graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park and Gallaudet University in the District, Quigley said becoming a sign language interpreter was not her first career choice. "I didn’t think, ‘I’m going to become an interpreter,’" Quigley said. "I just started doing it."

As a child, Quigley had a neighbor with Down syndrome, and that spurred an interest in working with people living with disabilities. When she had the chance to study American Sign Language in a free class at the University of Maryland, her interest in signing took off, even though she cared little about the class itself.

"I didn’t like it because they taught [signing] from a book," Quigley said. After that first class, Quigley eventually ended up studying "for real" at Gallaudet University. The university is world-renowned as a college for the deaf and for those with partial hearing loss.

Dropped into an "immersion" class where the instructor insisted she begin signing from day one, it was sink or sign for Quigley, who eventually became a certified interpreter by The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf.

Fast forward a few years and Quigley was eventually signing full time. She started out helping friends, then churches and community groups. When former Laurel Mayor Joe Robison learned of the burgeoning deaf and hearing-impaired population in his community, he contracted Quigley to interpret for them at all public City Council meetings.

Kim Rau, clerk to the Laurel City Council, said Quigley and her staff have been instrumental in helping the city reach their citizens with hearing loss. "We send them an agenda; they are always there," Rau said. "She’s just great."

Previous to contracting with Quigley, the city would communicate with citizens in a variety of ways, including writing notes back and forth.

According to the latest U.S. Census figures, the combined number of deaf or hearing-impaired people living in Maryland and the District is close to 300,000. Many deaf and hearing-impaired residents live in Laurel and Greenbelt, where Quigley also interprets at council meetings.

The popularity of Gallaudet and its ability to serve deaf and hearing-impaired students from pre-kindergarten to graduate school has made the area surrounding the school attractive to many people in the deaf community, said Quigley.

But not every deaf or hearing-impaired person prefers Gallaudet University for everything. So Quigley has her share of students at the University of Maryland, College Park, and other colleges that need interpreters.

If she wanted, Quigley said she could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She has done round-the-clock work for several companies, including new employee training sessions for UPS at 4:30 a.m. "There are some interpreters who love doing 9-to-5 work. I like to have time to putz around," Quigley said.

Until a few years ago, Quigley, who is Jewish, was interpreting for a Christian church on Sundays, but it got to be more than her schedule could handle. "I said, ‘Enough,’" she laughed.

Both of her children have normal hearing, but they learned to sign before they spoke, Quigley said. Signing with her children has sometimes come in handy when hearing them would be impossible.

Quigley said that she was once at a concert at the MCI Center with her daughter, who was seated away from her. They located each other with their binoculars, and were able to sign to each other all night.

One of the hazards of a job that requires using her hands to speak instead of her mouth is that sometimes her husband has caught her signing in her sleep, she said.

The other hazard is hearing the sometimes mean comments people with normal hearing make about deaf people when they think they cannot be heard.

"I caught someone saying something nasty about deaf people when I was signing with a friend one day," said Quigley. "You should have seen the look on their face when I told them, ‘I can hear you.’"

By Kathryn J. Hudson