Gertrude Baines, looking cozy wrapped in a bundle of blankets, sits in her wheelchair facing cameras and television reporters. One crouches near the floor by her cotton booties, another shoots questions from above, his microphone not far from her cinnamon-brown lips.
"How does it feel to be 114?" they ask in loud voices so she can hear them.
"What do you eat? What do you like to do? Do you have a favorite president?" Then, the most popular question, and the one Baines dislikes the most: "What's your secret?"
"Why all these questions?" she snaps back curiously. "I want to know." ? "Because you're remarkable," one reporter says.
"Because you're No. 1," a nurse chimes in.
Baines turns her eyes, dimmed a cloudy blue by age, toward the tiled floor, unconvinced. The supercentenarian is no stranger to attention, but she is as struck by this latest swirl of interest as people are by her age. The death of 115-year-old Maria de Jesus in Portugal on Jan. 2 made Baines the oldest person on Earth, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age.
As she slept the day away in her robe, unaware of her distinguished title, a frenzy started to build outside. A dozen reporters rang the Western Convalescent Hospital west of USC before 10 a.m. to request interviews. (The director was out so no one was allowed inside.) Headlines splashed Baines' name across the globe, and Guinness World Records noted the new titleholder.
It would be a week like no other for Baines and the staff and residents of Western Convalescent. The modest facility on West Adams Boulevard has been her home since a broken hip prevented her from living alone with the help of a caretaker at the age of 107.
The interviews, the visitors and the questions became too much after four days, and Baines excused herself from the commotion.
"I just want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head," she says to her nurse.
For a society that relishes first-place, record-breaking, one-of-a-kind feats, Baines' title isn't something she actually aspired to or even likes talking about much.
Hers is a record achieved simply by being.
Gerontologists are eager to study her genes. Senior citizens at the center long to be like her. "Wonderful, and with hardly any wrinkles," says Azlee Ross, 85.
