The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Roseville Girls Look to Help Santa Cruz Teen Pay for a Heart Transplant


If all goes as planned, a green bracelet will help save the life of 18-year-old Gavin Jack.

“It kills me to know that he’s going through this right now,” said Kyli Oleson.

Oleson wants to help Jack get a heart transplant.

“It’s not fair that it costs $75,000 to save a kid’s life,” said Oleson.

Oleson lives in Roseville and Jack 160 miles away in Santa Cruz.

“It hurts, I know it hurts,” said Oleson.

The two have never met.

“When I found out about Gavin’s condition, it hit home for me. He’s also in high school and I realized that could be me,” said Oleson.

It started as a senior project at Granite Bay High School and quickly turned in to an all-out fundraiser.

“If I reach the goal of 300 bracelets [and] t-shirts in one month, that’s already $7,000 alone,” Oleson said.

And this purple-y nail polished 9-year-old is the artistic master-mind behind the bracelets.

“It makes me feel good he could die at any time now I know I am helping someone and changing his life,” said Angelina.

Oleson and Angelina met through the “Beside the Blue Foundation” – meant to help law enforcement families across the state who may have financial hardships.

“The goal is to sell 300 bracelets and 300 t-shirt by the end of the month,” Oleson said. And if they do, they could end up saving the life of a total stranger.

For more info on how you can help Gavin Jack, go to http://www.facebook.com/teamgavinj

[kuhio98]

[kuhio98]

LUBBOCK, TX - Last Sunday, Shannon Torrez's dog Asia became a mother. The Sharpei and Pitbull mix gave birth to one puppy named Raider. It was a surprise to Shannon, but nothing compared to what came next.

"I got a call from a friend of mine that three kittens had been dropped off on her front porch in a little bucket and she didn't know what to do with them. I went and picked them up, figuring I was going to have to bottle feed them for a little while before adopting them," Shannon said. "When I got home Asia was kind of throwing a fit that I had the kittens and she wanted to see them. I put them up to her and she didn't want to me to get them out of her sight."

Asia immediately began taking care of the kittens. She cleaned them, nursed them and protected them.

"The first couple of days she wouldn't leave their side at all. It took her a few days for them to get settled in and for her to get comfortable before she would even leave the box," she said.

Although it seems unusual, it's something that veterinarians have seen before.

"It occurs actually pretty often," said Dr. Lane Preston with the Animal Medical Center in Lubbock. "She goes ahead and adopts those kittens as her own even though they're not hers. They don't smell like dogs but the urge to mother and nurse is greater than all of those things."

He says this usually occurs when female dogs go through their heat cycle. Their bodies think they are having a puppy and even if they aren't, the dogs still produce milk.

Sometimes the dogs can suffer health problems when they have milk without puppies to drink it, so this kind of surrogate mothering is encouraged.

"There are times when we have to tell the people, do you know of anybody that has some puppies or has some kittens that you could put on this mom to help her out a little bit?"

The kittens are about three and a half weeks old right now. They will stay with Shannon and Asia for another four weeks.

"I honestly thought she would take them in, you know clean them, keep them warm at least, but that I was going to feed them because she is much bigger than they are. But no, they got the hang of it and she has no problem with them," said Shannon.

Dog milk is close enough to cat milk that the kittens should suffer no ill effects.

Torrez has tentatively named the cats Jade, Jewel and Gunner.

[kuhio98]

Kennedy Hubbard Raises Thousands To Help Sick Children and Their Families

Kennedy Hubbard, 16, has never looked much like the other kids at school.

Born with Lymphatic Malformation, a mass of fluid-filled cysts surround her mouth and jaw, Hubbard was about five years old before she knew she was different.

"Once she was in school, around other kids and reacting to the way they looked at her, she would look at me kind of puzzled," recalls her mother, Leanne, 44, of Moorestown, N.J.

But Kennedy didn't let those differences faze her.

"When I look in the mirror, I just see myself," says Kennedy, a setter on her school's volleyball team. "It is what it is."

Two years ago, when she was a freshman at Moorestown (N.J.) High school, she and her family launched Kennedy's Cause, which has raised more than $34,000 by selling bracelets, t-shirts and car magnets stamped with her personal motto – "Shine."



The money goes to fund research for better treatments and possible cures for her disease and to help other sick children and their struggling families, no matter what their disease or disability.

"She's dedicated herself to making this journey better for the next people," says Dr. Cameron Trenor, director of the Vascular Anomalies Center at Boston Children's Hospital.

"It's priceless, the perspective she gives on how kids can embrace their differences," he says, "and handle what are some very serious medical problems."

Kennedy's foundation helped buy an expensive medical bed for a girl in Hawaii with CLOVES Syndrome and gas money to a family in Ohio who drove two hours a day for six months to be with their hospitalized baby boy.

"From being in the hospital so many times, I've known so many families in need, kids littler than me who have similar medical issues," says Kennedy. "I want to give them hope."

Kennedy goes out of her way to befriend and mentor other children with Lymphatic Malformation.



This past summer, that included cutting out of volleyball practice to travel to the New Jersey shore to meet with the vacationing Shaffer family from Culpeper, Va., whose 2-year-old son, Cole, has an almost identical lymphatic mass in his face.

"I was scared of the day Cole says to me, 'Why are they staring at me?' " says Cole's Mom, Caryn, 32. "But one response Kennedy told me that stuck in my head like a mantra is, 'Curiosity is OK; cruelty is not.' "

Kennedy's help was invaluable, she says.

"The hope Kennedy's given me you can't put a price on," she says. "I can now look down the road and see a bright future for my boy."

[kuhio98]

Inmates give back by crocheting gifts for babies at Children's Hospital


FRANKLIN, Wis. —Convicted criminals are making blankets for sick babies.

It's a new program at Milwaukee County's House of Correction, but WISN 12 News' Marianne Lyles discovered it's the female inmates who gaining from the gifts they're making.

Valerie Jernigan's therapy while locked up in the House of Correction involves a plastic needle and some yarn.

"With confinement comes a lot of anxiety, depression and being away from your family, and this helps. This helps," Jernigan said.

She knows those feelings all too well having been in and out of jail and prison for much of her adult life.

"I'm ashamed to say I'm almost 50, and I'm still coming back and forth," Jernigan said.

But now she's found a purpose -- leading other inmates. They call her Mama Bear.

It's all because House of Correction Assistant Superintendent Kerri McKenzie came up with the idea of crocheting.

"You have 70 inmates in a dorm with nothing to do. So that just breeds tension," McKenzie said. "I was also made aware there were other correctional facilities doing projects such as this."

Plastic needles/hooks and yarn were donated.


It started out with inmates just learning how to crochet, then they learned to create blankets. Now they know how to create infant mittens and hats.

But where would this all go?

"I just suggested maybe we could donate to Children's Hospital since it is such a great place," Corrections Officer Sarah Moore said.

Moore remembered how her own daughter, Jordan, as a newborn, was in Children's Hospital with brain malformation and heart failure.

"They didn't know what was wrong with her for the first three days. They just told me she would pass away, and there's wasn't much they could do for her," Moore said,

Jordan has had six successful brain surgeries. Today, she's a happy, healthy 5-year-old, but these women, especially Jernigan, understand there are more babies like her.

"My sister, God rest her soul, she had sickle cell anemia, and she was practically raised in Children's Hospital," Jernigan said. "It just feels wonderful, being able to give something back after I've taken so much," Jernigan said.

"It gives them a sense of purpose and accomplishment," McKenzie said.

"It's amazing. They're so excited and happy about it, and we hope they carry it over to when they're not incarcerated anymore," Moore said.

The inmates volunteer to take part in the program, and there's no cost to taxpayers.
The Milwaukee County House of Correction is taking donations of yarn and plastic needles so that more inmates can learn to crochet.

[kuhio98]

From People Magazine Heroes Among Us:

STEELWORKERS IN ILLINOIS
Braving a fiery wreck, they pull victims out alive

Just before 10 p.m. on March 15, the Birmingham Steel plant in Bourbonnais, Ill., shook with a deep ramble. No one on the night shift seemed concerned; steel mills often reverberate with "wet charges"—-explosions set off as chunks of scrap metal, moist from sitting outdoors, strike the furnace where they're melted down. But this time was different. Crane operator Mark Lapinsky peered outside the plant grounds and to his horror saw a jumble of railroad ears engulfed in fire and smoke. He sprinted to the shipping office.

"Amtrak wreck! Call 911!" he screamed, then ran through the plant summoning coworkers. Heading south from Chicago with 216 people aboard, the train, the City of New Orleans, had collided at a crossing with a truck carrying 18 tons of steel. Driver John Stokes, 58, escaped with cuts and bruises, but 11 people on the train died and 116 were injured. (The cause of the crash remains under investigation.) Terrible as the toll was, it would have been worse but for Lapinsky and 34 fellow steelworkers. "They were the major heroes," says Bourbonnais Fire Chief Mike Harshbarger. "They were there first, willing to wade into the mess."

When Lapinsky reached the crash site, 100 yards from the mill, he found people crawling out of a ditch, drenched in water and blood. "Out comes a crew member holding a little girl," he recalls. "He hands her to me and tells me to get help. I look down, and her left foot is missing." Lapinsky wrapped her wound in his jacket until he spied a nurse. (Though the girl, Ashley Bonnin, 8, of Nesbit, Miss., survived, her mother, June, 46, was killed, along with a cousin and two friends, all between the ages of 8 and 11.) Crane operator Dale Winkel, 41, and shipping clerk Joe Brown, 29, joined Lapinsky in pulling out survivors as fire spread through the wreckage. At one point, passenger Greg Herman, 40, of Memphis crawled out, handed off Kristen, his 8-year-old daughter, then raced back to the sleeping car where his wife, Lisa, 39, and their other children, Kaitlin, 5, and David, 3, remained. Lapinsky, Brown and Winkel intercepted him. "One of them said, 'You can't go in there,' " Herman recalls. "I grabbed him and said, 'My wife and kids are in there.' He said, 'Let's go.' " The steelworkers crawled in and got out Herman's family, all of whom suffered only minor injuries. "They wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for them," Herman says of the steel men.

Moments later, the plant's night supervisor Bob Curwick, 39, and millwright Jack Casey, 41, entered the dining car to find Susan Falls, her right leg crushed by debris. Falls told them her husband, John, and their 19-year-old daughter Jennifer were somewhere inside. At the time of the crash, the family had been eating cheesecake. Afterward, Falls, 46, called out their names but heard nothing. "I'm not going to make it," she told Curwick and Casey. "If you're going to die, I'm going to die with you," Curwick replied. "And I'm too ornery to die." John, 56, had escaped on his own, and after searching the car, Curwick was startled when a hand reached out from a pile of tables and chairs and grabbed his ankle. It was Jennifer, who has Down's syndrome, immobilized by fractures of the ribs and spine. Curwick and Casey stayed with mother and daughter as the flames drew closer and firefighters cleared debris. Finally a hose appeared, and water came pouring in ("The sweetest sound I ever heard," says Casey).

On the scene until 3:30 a.m., the steelworkers took the next day off. When they returned, they met with counselors and talked of their trauma—especially the lives they couldn't save. "There were a bunch of tough guys in there," says Casey. "But there were plenty of tears."

[kuhio98]

Ospreys who nested atop Brevard traffic pole safely moved



VIERA -- Florida
A family of ospreys that had built their nest on top of a traffic signal pole at a busy Brevard County intersection have been safely relocated.

They didn't fly the coop; they simply got a new home, county officials said.

The birds' nest was on top of a pole at the intersection of Stadium Parkway and Viera Boulevard, just north of Space Coast Stadium and Viera High School.

After waiting for the babies to get old enough -- and after getting special permits from state and federal agencies -- workers moved the nets to another, taller pole nearby.

Ospreys are known for building nests on manmade structures and causing damage.

The traffic signal would have been costly to replace, making the move necessary.



Okay, English Majors ~ Which is correct? Ospreys who or Ospreys that
Isn't who used when speaking of people?