May 27, 1998 Whittaker reached the top of Mt. Everest on his third try on May 27, 1998, fulfilling a lifetime ambition and becoming the first person with a handicap to do so. Whittaker's current goal is to scale the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. He has already climbed Australia's two highest mountains, Aussieland's highest peak and its most remote mountain. Tom Whittaker was born on January 4, 1964 in San Diego, California. He was adopted at age 2 by an army couple who divorced when he was taken away from her after just six months. She never tried to find him but instead moved on with her life while he spent the next several years in various foster homes. In 1977, at the age of 6, he was enrolled in a special school for children with autism. He loved being there, making friends and learning new things, and he made some important connections there. One of his teachers helped him get a job as an assistant manager at a McDonald's restaurant when he turned 13. He worked there for almost a year before moving on to another fast food place where he worked for three months before getting hired on by a company that manufactured metal furniture. Here's where his story takes a strange turn for the better: someone at the company saw him trying to lift a truck off of its tires with nothing but a pair of wires and asked him if he wanted to come work for them full time.