About ten years ago, Louise Stoll, 69, was living in Washington, D.C., when her daughter Miriam, who lived in Vermont and was expecting her second child, arrived for a visit.
"When I saw her get off the plane, she was almost seven months along, had a toddler on her hip, a 20-pound car seat in the other arm, and a diaper bag," Stoll tells gradparents.com in a telephone interview. "That was quite a scene. I thought: There's got to be a better way than this."
Better how, though?
"I figured, well, she couldn't get rid of the kid, or the diaper bag," Stoll, who now lives in Vermont, says. "But, she could get rid of the car seat."
That was when her grandmotherly ingenuity took over, and that’s how Louise Stoll invented the Child Aviation Restraint System, or CARES.
The Federal Aviation Administration certfied CARES in September 2006, and people could purchase it shortly thereafter. This certification means that parents can bring CARES on board and use it during all phases of flight. It also means that airlines cannot prevent parents from using CARES on board.The restraint is designed for children, between 22 and 44 pounds, who are able to sit in their own airplane seat.
The one-pound safety harness is made specifically to fit on the back of airline seats — not automobile seats — and allows parents and grandparents traveling with toddlers to check their car seats along with their luggage. Then they don’t have to fight, fumble, and wrestle with tethering a car seat to the airline seat’s safety belt.
But it was a long haul from the 1999 "a-ha moment," as Stoll describes it when she saw her daughter getting off an airplane, to 2007 when CARES first went to market.
A grandmother of nine, ages 1 to 13, Stoll immediately began doodling on paper nine years ago.
"The original image I had was the [jump] seat that flight attendants have," Stoll says, talking about the seat that folds down and uses a harness-style seat belt to secure the occupant.
After coming up with several different drawings, her husband, Marc Monheimer, suggested she seek out a patent attorney. The patent process took two-and-a-half years; in June 2002, Stoll finally gained patent protection for her drawings and ideas.
During that time, Stoll spent a year working on a business plan and wondering who should manufacture her idea, or if she should fund it herself. Armed with a confidentiality agreement, she initially took the idea to makers of children’s car seats and carriages, including Kosco and Graco.
Both companies liked the patent drawings, she says, but all the manufacturers said the same thing.
"They were concerned about getting this through the FAA," Stoll says.
So Stoll shifted gears.
"We started talking to companies that manufactured things for the airlines," she says. "I cold-called. I talked to the top people. This issue [of child restraint on airplanes] had been percolating for 30 years. Everybody knew this was going to be a big thing."
Stoll finally settled on AmSafe Aviation, a Phoenix-based company, which designs, builds, and markets most airline safety belts. AmSafe was intrigued with the idea, and asked Stoll if its company could build a prototype. She signed an agreement with the company in 2002; AmSafe then built the prototype and began taking it to airlines to gauge their interest.
More important, AmSafe also took the safety device to the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, in Oklahoma City, for rigorous physical testing. Once it passed all the tests there, it only took another — four years or so — for the FAA to approve it.
"And that," Stoll says with a chuckle, "was considered fast."
With AmSafe actually doing the manufacturing, Stoll had to figure out how to sell it. Airlines never actually bought the the product; hence, she started KIds Fly Safe in 2006. Her market: parents and grandparents who have known the nightmare of flying with a baby and a car seat, and she began a grassroots marketing campaign.
Stoll says that since last year, when she first began selling the CARES product, she has sold more than 30,000 of the restraints. The harness is for sale on Stoll’s website, kidsflysafe.com.
"It taught me that you have to be super-patient to do anything with a large organization," she says, "and when you get an intuitive sense, it’s time to make a phone call."
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