The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Canadian cross-country coach helps ailing Russian in awesome Olympic moment

Anton Gafarov was having a tough time on Tuesday.

Having reached the semifinals of the men's cross-country sprint, the 27-year-old Russian fell twice and then broke one of his skis. It looked like he'd have to walk off the course instead of crossing the finish line.

But enter Justin Wadsworth, a former American Olympian who's coaching the Canadian team in Sochi. With a competitor struggling, Wadsworth ran out to Gafarov and hooked him up with an extra ski. Though his run took almost as twice as long as his qualifying and quarterfinal run, Gafarov was able to finish the race.

Wadsworth, who competed for the United States in Lillehammer, Nagano and Salt Lake City, is no stranger to people helping people on the cross-country circuit. He's married to Canadian Beckie Scott, whose relay partner Sara Renner was lent a ski pole by Norwegian coach Bjornar Haakensmoen in the 2006 Turin Games. The act of generosity helped Scott and Renner clinch a silver medal while a pair of Norwegian skiers took fourth.

Scott has said that helping out fellow competitors is the rule and not the exception in cross-country.

"Had it been anybody else on the course, they would have done the same thing," Scott said in 2012. "It just happened that it was a Norwegian coach at that moment who had a pole for Sara.

"If someone hadn't done it, then that would have been exceptional. It's really more common to give people poles and help them out than it is to do nothing."

[kuhio98]

Eugene Westerhouse Builds Wheelchair Ramps for Disabled People

Eugene "Westie" Westerhouse takes humility to a whole new level.

Ask the 87-year-old Eudora, Kan., resident about his good deeds and he'll start talking about wood and tape measures and four-by-fours.

When pressed about his good deeds, he says, "I was just looking for something to do."

But to many Westerhouse is a godsend, having volunteered his time and still-significant muscle designing and building free wheelchair ramps for more than 300 people with special needs for nearly four decades.

"Westie is known to almost everybody within a 100-mile radius of here," says friend and wheelchair ramp co-builder Bill VanDeBerghe, who leads the Kingdom Builders ministry of the Eudora United Methodist Church, the umbrella for Westerhouse's charitable works.

"He's extremely embarrassed by any attention," says VanDeBerghe "but Westie is a remarkable man and quite a leader."

She should know.

Westie built a ramp for her husband, Gary, 62, after he suffered a serious stroke last June.
"Westie is our superhero!" she says.

Westerhouse, a former rural postal carrier who lives with his wife of 65 years, Dottie, on the farm homesteaded by his great-great-grandparents, built his first wheelchair ramp in 1978 when contacted by a church bishop with a parishioner in need.

"I took time off from carrying mail and traveled about 110 miles to go help an old gentleman who needed a ramp so he could get to the doctor," Westerhouse says. "And it just kind of grew from there."

Westerhouse retired from the postal service in 1993 and since then estimates he and his crew of fellow church members have built about 14 ramps a year.

"The one I'm building right now is for a lady who is handicapped and will never be out of her wheelchair," Westerhouse says.

"And I've built two now in the last few months for children," he says. "It's great to be able to help these young people."

Those in need learn about Westerhouse's ramps in a variety of ways – word of mouth, through the church and, more recently, from a feature article in the local newspaper ("Let me send you a copy," Westie offers).

For Deb and Gary Jennings of Lawrence, Kan., the Kingdom Builders came to them after a call from Deb's mom.

"I was in shock and didn't know what to do or what our needs might be," says Deb, 57, of Gary's stroke.

"I had assumed my husband would be walking out of the hospital," she says. "But when that couldn't happen, Westie and Bill calmed me down and led me into the world of wheelchairs and wheelchair ramps."

Westerhouse constructs each ramp in sections inside his home workshop, with the average cost in materials between $700 and $800.

These materials are often paid for through church funds or through grants from local health agencies. All labor is donated, with a crew of up to a dozen volunteers installing home ramps under Westerhouse's guidance.

"It's remarkable," says VanDeBerghe. "Westie is 87 and the vast majority – in fact everyone – we're building for are people much younger than he is.

"He has this incredible stamina we are all amazed by," he says. "Building the ramps can be very tiring, but Westie is right there in the middle of the work."

"I had no idea how much our world would change once we had the wheelchair ramp," says Deb Jennings.

"We call our ramp 'The Freedom Ramp,' " she says. "And I can't say enough good about Westie. He started the ball rolling on how we were going to enter into this new world."

Westerhouse's typically humble response?

"Wherever I'm needed," he says, "I'll go."

[kuhio98]

'Heroic' father rescues 5 children from burning townhouse

SACRAMENTO – Firefighters credited "heroic acts" of a young father for saving the lives of his five children as fire tore through their south Sacramento townhouse.

What may have started as a kitchen fire shortly after 1 a.m. quickly spread to the entire apartment at 46 Creeks Edge Way.

Neighbor Tyrone Thompson said he watched Deon Hill, 24, run out of the townhouse with three young children in his arms and a fourth child clutching his pants leg.

"I just remember him saying I have a baby in there," Thompson recalled.

Hill's cousin, Shawn Jones, said Hill went back into the burning building and crawled commando-style up the stairs to pull his 3-year-old daughter, Joy, from her bed.

The two emerged choking on smoke and both suffered minor burns, but Jones said both would be released from the hospital after overnight observation.

Jones said Hill was home with the children while his wife, Sierra, was away on an overnight shift as a home healthcare worker.

[kuhio98]

Soldier saves German Shepherd after it was hit on Interstate 40
Bella Foundation, Animal Medical Center of Midwest City team up to care for dog

MIDWEST CITY, Okla. —A German Shepherd was left for dead after a car hit it on Interstate 40 Wednesday evening. The driver behind the wheel of the vehicle that hit the dog never stopped.

A soldier from the Moore area drove by the dog and saw it suffering. She stopped and took the injured animal to the Bella Foundation.

The Bella Foundation and the Animal Medical Center of Midwest City have teamed up to care for the dog, who they are calling “Trooper.”

The Bella Foundation isn’t sure if “Trooper” belongs to someone or if he is a stray. They say he will be up for adoption if an owner does not come forward.

For more information on how to help the dog, visit Trooper’s donation page. http://www.gofundme.com/Trooper You can follow her progress at the gofundme link. Trooper is recovering from surgery and they are looking for his family.


2/21/14 Update on Trooper:

Trooper's owners have been located. However...

Trooper's owners have been located. However, because of his extensive recovery they feel they are not equipped to give him the care he needs over the next several weeks and have elected to release ownership of Trooper to The Bella Foundation SPCA.

We are currently searching for a Foster Family that can help Trooper during his recovery and can ensure he gets the tender loving care he needs.

This will not be an easy task. Trooper had MAJORY surgery on his back hips and will need lots of love, support, and care during this time. While he is recovering he would do best in a quiet home with possibly one other dog. Playing in the yard is still a long way off but IS on the horizon.

The Bella Foundation will be entirely responsible for his veterinary expense and will ensure his new foster family has all the tools needed to see Trooper through this.

If you would like to foster Trooper and help him start a new life please visit http://www.thebellafoundation.org/foster

[kuhio98]

Students surprise teacher with donation after house burns down

SOUTHAVEN, MS - (WMC-TV) - There is nothing left of Emily Nelson's house.

Two weeks ago, Nelson's home burned to the ground. She lost everything. But now, with money from her students at DeSoto Central Middle School in Southaven, Miss., she can start to rebuild.

"I can't imagine just going out of my house with my pajamas on knowing that there was nothing left of my house," said Gracie Miles, one of the students in Nelson's class.

Miles and other students are part of Biz World. They are learning business by making and selling products at school. But before they could start, the group needed $100 to cover costs. It came from Nelson's pocket.

"They may discover something about themselves and become a little entrepreneur," said Nelson.

For the past several weeks, students have been selling all sorts of items they made at school.

"We had more girls in our group than boys. There was only two boys in our group so we decided to go with jewelry," noted one student.

When it came time for the students to donate all of their profit money to a worthy cause, they decided to give it to a familiar face, going through a difficult time.

"She gave so much to us, so we decided to give something to her," said a student.

It is a heart warming reminder that what goes around comes around. Now the students are combining their profits, totaling $600, to give Nelson an unexpected return on her investment while also helping her family start over.

"For them to decide that my family is the worthy cause to help out at this moment in time that's just, it was very sweet," added Nelson.

[kuhio98]

'Full circle': Man finds stranger who saved him from suicide 6 years ago

It was a Good Samaritan encounter that changed a young man’s life forever.

Six years ago, on a bitterly cold January morning, Jonny Benjamin was coaxed away from a ledge on London’s Waterloo Bridge by a total stranger walking to work.

Benjamin was 20 years old and had just been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder — a debilitating combination of schizophrenia and depression. He had dropped out of university, held little hope of being able to hold down a job or one day have a family, and decided life was not worth living.

Then a stranger’s voice pulled him out of the darkness.

“You can get through this. You can overcome anything,” Benjamin recalls the man saying, as he calmly spoke to him for 25 minutes, inviting him to join him for a chat over coffee instead.

The chance interaction altered everything for Benjamin who was ultimately pulled to safety and spent years battling his way back to health.

But there was one thing preventing him from achieving full closure on the bleakest moment in his life — lingering questions about the identity of the man who rescued him.

So, on Jan. 14, exactly six years after that near-fateful day, Benjamin launched an online campaign to try to find the man who'd helped him, taking to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with his story in the hopes that it would jog some memories. "He was the first person to give me hope, and his words actually prompted my recovery," he says in the YouTube plea. "Now I need your help to find him. I've called him Mike, although I'm not too sure if that's his real name."

The search, which used the hashtag #findmike, was soon trending in the U.K., Canada and South Africa, and was retweeted thousands of times, including by singer Boy George, British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and actor Stephen Fry.

Benjamin, now a mental health campaigner and ambassador for charity Rethink Mental Illness, said he has only recently felt confident enough to speak openly about his suicide attempt, and hoped to raise awareness through his story — but held out little hope of actually finding the mystery man.

But his search ended on Jan. 28, when Benjamin finally came face-to-face with his savior: Neil Laybourn, a mild-mannered personal fitness trainer from Surrey (just outside London), who had also spent years wondering what came of the man he coaxed from the edge.

Though he initiated the search, Benjamin says he was initially "petrified" to meet Laybourn: “I wasn’t sure what memories were going to be triggered from that, or if I was going to recognize him,” he told TODAY.com. But the fear quickly faded.

“Do you remember me?” Laybourn, 31, asks in a video of the pair's reunion, posted to YouTube, in which the pair is seen greeting each other with a long bear hug.

"It's all coming back," Benjamin says, moved to tears.

Laybourn was first alerted to the #findmike mission by his fiancé who saw a post on Facebook.


“Neil said the big shock first of all was to find out I was still alive, and that I was looking for him,” Benjamin said. “And it’s been a massive shock how big the campaign has got.”

Benjamin says it was Laybourn’s calm, collected demeanor that first lured him out of his state of distress on that day in 2008. He also noticed that Laybourn was a young man, much like himself, on his way to work — which filled him with hope.

“I was in my own world and he managed to burst the bubble that I was in and get through to me,” he added.

During their reunion in a south London pub, the pair went over the chain of events and Laybourn recounted details Benjamin had not been able to recall. He said at one point Benjamin had agreed to get coffee and started to climb back over the railing. Then he noticed the police pulling up and, fearful of being sent back to hospital, had a change of heart.

Laybourn had to reach out and grab Benjamin as he attempted to jump. “Up to that point, I remembered him stopping me with his words but actually, he physically stopped me,” Benjamin said. “It’s even more reason to thank him.”

When the police did finally arrive and get ahold of Benjamin, Laybourn was not been allowed near him and had no way of following up.

“He said it was amazing for him to see me smiling and back on my feet again, and how far I’d come,” Benjamin said. "He’s so humble about it. He says: 'I’m not a hero, I’m just an ordinary guy'. He’s taking it all in his stride and said: ‘I’m just proud of you Jonny.”

The pair plans to spend time getting to know each other in the coming weeks and months. Laybourn, who is getting married in August, also offered to help Benjamin get into shape.

“Everyone needs a friend like Neil,” said Benjamin. "He’s just the nicest guy. Very sensitive but very lovely and caring and kind, and just a great laugh.

"I always thought of that time as being very negative, I thought of that place as being the worst in my life,” Benjamin added. “I feel that I can look at it a very different way now. I’ve overcome that. I’ve come full circle and am able to close that chapter.”

[Taz_Zoee]

Here is a photo of Jonny and Neil. Jonny is on the left and Neil is on the right in the plaid shirt.
Two good looking young men!