Victoria Rivero Elliott spent her early childhood in Cuba speaking Spanish, started learning English at age 12, began studying French in eighth grade and by high school graduation had added German and Mandarin Chinese to her repertoire.

She mastered the languages without being able to hear the nasal vowels of French or the ichs and achs of German.

Elliott, who lost most of her hearing after an allergic reaction to medicine at age 4, learned the foreign languages by reading lips.

Taking home the Silver Knight in foreign language on May 9, 1968, was just one more nod to her efforts.

''When I won, that's when I knew nothing would stop me,'' she said on a recent afternoon from her office at the Overtown Transit Village, where she is a customer service manager for Miami-Dade's Paratransit Operations. ``I never give up. I get there.''

The same perseverance led her to take French as an eighth grade elective. The school and teachers advised her against the choice, suggesting she take an easier class.

''I encountered a lot of resistance from the school, the teachers,'' said Elliott. 'Saying `Why do you want to complicate your life? You had trouble learning English.' The more resistance I found, the more stubborn I became.''

These days, the Kendall resident admits, her German's not as sharp as it once was and her Chinese is rusty. But she hasn't forgotten the night she was awarded for her achievements.

Of those packed in the Dade County Auditorium for the ceremony, she was the last to know she had won.

The nominees sat in a row far from the stage. She has no hearing in her left ear, and only minimal hearing in her right. She was too far away to read the presenter's lips. As each runner-up was crowned, she saw her chances slipping away.

''When they called my name, I didn't hear my name,'' Elliott said. 'I remember the spotlight searching the whole row looking for me. Someone said, `Are you Victoria? Get up.' ''

After graduating from Southwest Miami High School, she continued to study foreign language at Barry College, spending her junior year abroad at Universite d'Aix-En Provence.

Elliott always wanted to travel and to be able to communicate in the native language. A voracious reader, she strove to read prose written in the original language so she wouldn't losing anything in the translation.

She used the language skills at her first job, working as a French and Spanish translator at an international engineering firm.

Meanwhile, she applied for jobs at National Airlines, searching for the opportunity to continue to travel. At the airline, she began researching a way to make it easier for the hearing impaired to make flight reservations.

She started at the now-defunct National in 1978 and by the next year had helped implement the first TTY reservation system at an airline.

''I was given the go-ahead to research the feasibility,'' Elliott said. ``Back in 1979 there was no [Americans with Disabilities Act], no requirement that deaf and hearing impaired have reasonable access.''

Elliott had heard about the machines that allow easier communications for the deaf but didn't know much about them.

''I looked up the deaf services bureau in the Yellow Pages,'' she said.

There, Tyrone Kennedy, who started the Deaf Service Bureau in Miami, helped her through the process.

''I met with the manufacturer,'' Elliott said. ``I really did a feasibility study. I said it would more than pay for itself in the first year. I was really proud when we were given the green light.''

The system allowed airline representatives to type messages on a phone with a keypad.

Elliott was responsible for implementing the TTY service at all five National Airlines regional reservations centers -- a first in the business, she says.

While working at National and Pan American World Airways, she also took advantage of the opportunity to travel -- taking weekend flights to Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico and Canada.

''The first year I had a little suitcase in the back of my car,'' she said. 'We would say, `Let's go to London for the weekend to see a play.' ''

Elliott, who was married at the time, left the airline industry in 1982 to raise her son, Alex.

She worked for insurance companies until about seven years ago, when she got a job with Miami-Dade Transit. She now works as a customer service manager for Paratransit Operations in the Southland Transit Service Center in Cutler Bay.

Recently, she was loaned to the United Way of Miami-Dade County for four months in order to give testimonials to groups about how she had been helped by the agency when she was a newly arrived immigrant child from Cuba. It was a United Way-sponsored agency that bought her first hearing aid, which allowed her to learn English and all the languages that followed.

Her Silver Knight statute sits proudly on a bookcase next to her computer at home.

The sword broke off during Hurricane Andrew, and the knight statue broke from the base. Her son spray-painted the knight silver and glued it back on to try and restore its luster.

''It's part of me. It's who I am,'' she said.

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