The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

From People: Heroes Among Us

After a Tragic Loss, Corey Bergman Gives Sick Kids the Gift of Music

Corey Bergman's son, Jared, was 20 years old, a college student who dabbled in drums and keyboard and was a fan of the Dave Matthews Band, when he died from a viral infection on March 26, 2010.

"When a tragedy like this happens, there's one of two ways a person can go," Bergman tells PEOPLE. "They can fall down and collapse or get up and move forward to try to make a difference."

Bergman and his wife Edda decided to make a fresh start after the tragedy, moving from New York to Miami in 2012. Shortly after, Bergman, now 60, started volunteering at Miami Children's Hospital and Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. Bergman, who had been playing guitar since he was 11 and has been in a band for many years, would play for patients and their families.

He would even let the kids play his guitar, but it was a bit too big for the youngest kids' small hands. So he decided to try teaching kids the ukulele. Placing it in the hands of one little girl at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, "it was magical," Bergman tells PEOPLE.

[kuhio98]

Hmmm, I'm not sure I completely agree with the interpretation, but it's an interesting take. It's hard when something "bad" happens to us to see that it might be something "good" for another.

If you find someone's wallet -- no matter how much you need the $$ -- I don't think it's ever the right thing to take the money. I wouldn't see it as the "Lord providing" myself. I've been told that I'm a "Pollyanna", but even I have a hard time seeing the good in this situation....

How to Become an Angel
When a purse goes missing, it's found by an angel in just about the nick of time...
by Colleen Hughes

I’d driven all the way home before realizing I didn’t have my purse. I’d left it in the baby seat of the grocery cart I wheeled out to the parking lot. My iPhone, a week’s worth of spending money, my date book full of appointments– how could I have been so absent-minded?

My daughter Evie was with me in the passenger seat, which was highly unusual, and distracting. I mustn’t have checked to be sure I’d gotten everything out of the cart. “I forgot my purse, Evie. We have to go back.” A 15-minute drive. I pulled out of the driveway, immediately sorry I didn’t put Evie out first: “You left your whole purse?”

This wasn’t the first time I chanted the “Please let me find it” prayer. People are good, I told myself at the red light. The huge Lost and Found room at Grand Central Station proved it.

I’d been happily reunited with everything I’d ever left on the commuter trains that run in and out of the city. Even a bag of brand-new Christmas toys anyone could have claimed. But finders didn’t seem to be keepers, as far as I could see.

Evie’s cell phone rang at the next light. Her sister got a call at home. My purse was at customer service in the grocery store, ask for Tia. Halleluiah!

“Did you turn in my purse?” I asked the kid rounding up the carts in the lot. I’d give him a tip. “No,” he said, “I didn’t see it.”

Inside Tia handed me my purse. “A customer rolled it in, left it right there in the cart where he found it.”

“Are people the best, or what?” I said. “Thank you so much.”

Back in the car I pulled out my phone to call home. Date book, wallet… all there. On a lark I opened the wallet. “Evie, all the cash is gone. Every dollar.” Who was to blame?

“Well, Mom, you left it there for anybody…” She was blaming me? “And maybe for somebody who needed it more than you.” I didn’t agree, not completely. But it was a better thought than blaming her, or the cart kid, or the customer, or who knew who, and it didn’t matter.

The world is full of angels on earth, and maybe a little windfall will help someone out there become one.

[Karen]

Hmm, maybe? Hard to know what to feel, isn't it! At least the purse, phone and credit cards were intact!

[kuhio98]

Second Helping: Cafe Gives Juvenile Offenders Second Chance

DALLAS — This is one place that will give you a second chance. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was on hand to break bread and officially welcome Cafe Momentum to Thanksgiving Square downtown.

“It’s so important for our business to understand that greatness can come from tough times,” Mayor Rawlings said.

It may look like your typical corner cafe, but this place has something special that isn’t on the menu.

“Our running joke at Cafe Momentum is that we take kids out of jail and teach them to play with knives and fires — and makes Dallas a better community,” Cafe Momentum Executive Chef Chad Houser said.

Yeah, you heard right. For the past five years, Cafe Momentum has taken 160 young men from juvenile detention centers and given them the chance to get real world work experience, serving up something other than jail time.

“We’re seeing kids that never thought they would have hope, didn’t have inspiration in life, actually going on to great things,” Houser said.

Tamarrion Washington is one of those kids. “When I was 14, I committed a crime, and I ended up going to JDC,” he said.

It took going to a detention center for Washington to realize he was definitely on the wrong path. But that was then, and this is now.

“I learned how to, you know, go to work, come home and take care of my daughter,” Washington said. Eight-month-old Leah is his biggest motivator.

“I want her to know that she do have a father, you know, and that her dad always been there, since day one for her,” he said.

And this dad is now getting the momentum he needs to turn his life around.

[kuhio98]

Norwalk High School Students Get Lesson In Giving Back, Raise $20K For Charity

NORWALK (CBSLA.com) — Several high school seniors Tuesday donated more than $20,000 to several charities as part of a fundraising project at Norwalk High School.

According to school officials, each student researched a variety of charities and presented the organization they felt connected to within their government classes.

When presentations concluded, every class voted for a specific charity as the recipient of their fundraising efforts.

The following charities were chosen as recipients: Autism Research Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Doorway for Women and Families, Dream Big Project, National Hemophilia Foundation, National Kidney Foundation, Rady Children’s Hospital, Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, Susan G. Komen Foundation, Relay for Life, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

Around 10:15 a.m., students presented representatives of the 12 charities with checks inside the school gymnasium.

Many seniors were personally affected by the issues that the selected charities address. Students explained their reasoning for the selection of each charity.

Two students — Arianna Real, whose mother is on dialysis, and Jian Bravo, whose little sister had her kidney replaced to treat cancer — presented a check for $1,500 to the National Kidney Foundation.

“My sister was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age. We weren’t sure if she was going to make it or not because she developed a tumor that was the size of a football ,” Bravo said.

As of Monday, the students raised more than $20,000 for the charities in only three weeks, doubling their original goal of $10,000 officials explained.

[kuhio98]

Brooke Thomas Gives Away 1,000 Lunches a Week to Needy Kids

Brooke Thomas remembers being just seven while going through the lunch line at Centennial Elementary School in Dade City, Florida, and catching her friends staring at her full tray.

"They didn't have money in their account and I felt bad so I bought them food,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Her mom, Dianna Thomas, had no idea what was going on.

"Brooke was going through the lunch money in her account so quickly – quicker than you normally would – so I started asking her what she was buying," Dianna, 42, tells PEOPLE.

"It turned out she was buying food for some of her peers at school," she says. "I realized it was happening on more than one occasion, and that's when we realized the issue with hunger in the area."

It turns out more than seventy-five percent of the kids at Brooke's school are on free and reduced lunches, so the family decided to do something more permanent to help.

They came up with the idea for what is now The Thomas Promise Foundation, a non-profit that has packed 200,000 meals – about 1,000 every week – for schoolkids in the Tampa area since its inception in 2012.

Brooke, now an 11-year-old who takes dance and horseback riding lessons, also spends several days a week at The Thomas Promise headquarters helping load backpacks full of food.

Her teachers say the adorable and bubbly blonde is an inspiration to her classmates.

"I wish I had more students like Brooke in the building that looked at life like she does," Peggy Gilbert, her third-grade teacher, tells PEOPLE.

"She is the student that the other students know they can go to if they need anything," she says.

"I think the foundation is remarkable," she says. "I watch these kids go home with food that they might not have access to on the weekends and to know this all stemmed from Brooke's young mind, it just blows me away."

Each week, volunteers at The Thomas Promise Foundation pack and give away about a thousand backpacks filled with enough food to get students at 19 elementary and middle schools through the weekend.

They also offer a food pantry to the high school students in the area.

Dianna now runs the foundation. Brooke's father, Wade Thomas, 44, the owner of a local car dealership, donated an empty building on his property that now serves as the foundation's headquarters.

Area businesses donate money that the Thomas Promise then uses to shop with their partner, Feeding America, getting food at drastically reduced prices.

When Christy Cook, a mother of two boys, lost her husband – her high school sweetheart and the family's sole provider – she could barely pay the bills.

The Thomas Promise gave the family food and school supplies for weeks.

"They helped us in our time of need," Cook, 40, of Zephyrhills, Florida, tells PEOPLE.

"We lost everything," she says. "They didn't have to help us. They went above and beyond. What an amazing little girl."

Dianna is amazed at how her daughter has stayed so involved in the cause over the years.

"I'm very proud of her," she says. "It was very nice to see that she was so compassionate and so concerned at such a young age.

"You hope you're raising them to be compassionate," she says, "but to really see her want to make sure kids are receiving everything they need, she is just a great kid."

As for Brooke, she's just glad she's able to help other kids.

"I feel good knowing they have food to eat over the weekend," she says.

[mon]

Everone should be proud of Brooke, I am.