The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Heather Holland Helps Families Find Their Missing Loved Ones

Kristin Spires was just 20 years old in May 2010 when she vanished while driving to a party in Big Rapids, Mich.

Her stepmother, Carolyn, alerted police in her rural Michigan town, and a TV crew met her to report on the family’s frantic search.

That evening, even before the broadcast report was finished, Spires’ phone rang. Heather Holland was on the line.

"She had seen my story on TV," says Spires, "and wanted to help any way she could."

Holland sensed the need – just as she has for many other families she's helped since 2010 – as director of the nonprofit TrackMissing.

By scouring police and court reports as well as the Internet, collecting family medical records and sometimes even hitting the ground herself, the full-time social worker and part-time sleuth has helped families learn the fates of nine missing people.

"The reason I do this is because I could not stand not knowing," says Holland, 31, of Big Rapids, a married mother of a 5-year-old son.

"I try to work on cases where's there’s not already 100 people looking," she says. "You can't find them all. But I hope the families feel better knowing there's somebody else out there trying to help."

Holland works hand in hand with law enforcement, who welcomes her assistance.

"We have over 4,400 missing persons cases in Michigan," says Detective Sarah Krebs of the Michigan State Police.

"I don't have time to do a web search on every single case," she says.

"To have somebody like Heather who will do that for us and give us the tips that make a match," she says, "it's like they hand us the case on a silver platter.

Krebs recalls a man who disappeared in 1992, and whose then-unidentified remains turned up in another county much later. As a liaison aiding the man's family, Holland gave police the medical records that led to a positive ID.

"Heather's a great asset to law enforcement," says Krebs. "It's another weapon we can give the families of missing people in their search."

Holland got started in 2009 when a friend remarked about an aunt who'd vanished as a child decades earlier.

Eager to help, Holland logged in to online forums maintained by families of other missing persons – and learned that adults rarely get the urgent response of Amber Alerts for children.

She didn't solve her friend's case, but her search led her to TrackMissing, which had been founded in 2004.

Holland e-mailed the one-man operation with an offer to volunteer.

She taught herself to follow paper trails and master the online National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, maintained by the National Institute of Justice.

When TrackMissing’s director took ill in 2010, Holland took over.

She devotes about 20 hours each week in late nights and weekends to her amateur sleuthing.

Once, a record search and a quick call brought a dying woman together with a long-lost brother. But Holland is realistic about the long odds that accompany unanswered disappearances.

"I'm not one to provide a false hope," she says. "I can't promise we'll find them. I just like to give people some closure."

In Spires' case, Holland spotted a Facebook tip and followed the lead to a site in the woods. There, 11 months after Kristin vanished, Holland and Kristin's stepmother located a bone that police eventually ID'd as belonging to the young woman.

Although the case is unsolved, "If not for Heather, we'd still be looking," says Carolyn Spires, 38, of Moreley, Mich.

"There's no way to thank somebody for something like that," says Spires.

"If Heather gets something in her mindset, she's going to go after it until she gets it," she says.

"She definitely kept me going," she says. "She’s an awesome, awesome person."

[kuhio98]

Nick Silverio Rescues Babies Through His Crisis Hotline

When Miami businessman Nick Silverio answers the phone, often there's a tiny little life in the balance.

As the founder of A Safe Haven for Newborns, a nonprofit he founded in 2001 to provide a 24-hour-bilingual referral hotline for new mothers on the verge of abandoning their infants, Silverio, 70, says each call can save a child.

"It's an overwhelming experience to know a child can grow up," says Silverio. "It feels just as overwhelming the first [time a child was saved] as it does the 206th."

To date, Silverio has helped 206 newborns find their way to loving adoptive homes in Florida. Looking to support the safe haven law passed by the Florida legislature in 2000 that enables desperate parents to leave infants up to a week old at hospitals and fire stations no questions asked, Silverio dipped into his own pocket the following year begin his organization.

"It's my purpose in life," says Silverio, who takes no salary from the nonprofit and who has also helped frightened moms get their babies back under the law's 30-day grace period.

His outreach changed the life of 10-year-old Kristopher Terrell, who is now the youngest of five children to parents Aja Iglesias-Terrell, 44, and Richard Terrell, 53. Ten years ago, Silverio answered his 24-hour crisis hotline to discover a frightened teenage mother on the other end. A week earlier she'd given birth to a baby boy. Now, feeling in no position to raise a child, the distraught girl said she didn't know what to do.

Calmly, Silverio told her he would be right over. Hopping in his car, Silverio purchased a baby carrier, then continued on to the girl's apartment, where he found the anxious teen hovering over a sleeping infant clad in a blue and white jumpsuit – little Kristopher Terrell.

"Uncle Nick is my hero," says Kristopher, now a fourth-grader. "He's the one who introduced me to my mom and dad. It's good that he helps babies."

The nonprofit proved a lifesaver for Silverio, too. Married almost 32 years to his beloved Gloria, he was devastated when she was killed in a car accident in 1999. Godfather to 14 children, Silverio bore the loss without the companionship of any children of his own – his attempts with Gloria to start a family having ended one heartbreaking Christmas Eve after Gloria suffered her second difficult miscarriage.

"She loved kids," Silverio says. "She loved seeing them grow and seeing them happy. We were always told we would have been wonderful parents."

Looking to honor her memory, he found a fit when he learned about Florida's safe haven law meant to protect babies from being abandoned.

"Helping give these babies a life," he says, "has turned my tragedy into joy for others."

Today A Safe Haven for Newborns, staffed by 300 volunteers, operates in all 67 Florida counties, partnering with fire chiefs, emergency medical services and hospitals to take in infants and then move them on to adoption agencies. Thanks to Silverio, other states look to Florida for advice on implementing infant-protection laws.

"When I was growing up, you'd hear of babies being abandoned in canals, in public bathrooms, in garbage dumpsters," says Florida state senator Rene Garcia. "Since Nick got involved, you never hear of that. He took it upon himself to bring awareness to the rest of the state to show this law exists, to make sure teens and women and parents knew this law was out there."

"He's reaching people in their most desperate moment," says firefighter Tammy Henghold, who was twice on hand when safe haven babies were left at her station in Lauderhill. "He's saving a life every day."

And he's helping to build families as well, says Kristopher's grateful mom, Aja.

"Because of Nick's act of love," she says, "we are blessed to have Kristopher in our home and our life. We consider Nick family."

[kuhio98]

Miracle on Madison Avenue
From walks in the woods to the busy streets of Manhattan, birds intrigued his late mother. Him, too.
By Marcus M. Silverman, New York, New York

Rain drizzled down on my head. I was early for work and drinking a paper cup of coffee outside the office on Madison Avenue.

I couldn’t sleep the night before or the night before that. My mom had passed away about eight months ago, and though I hadn’t fallen apart completely, I had my good days and bad days. Most of all, I just missed her.

At night, when it was clear outside, I’d look up at the sky and try to imagine her looking down on me. But more often than not, I couldn’t quite get that picture in my head.

I took another sip of coffee and sighed. Everything else seemed to be falling into place in my life. I had a good job, a decent apartment and a girlfriend I cared about. Why couldn’t I have faith that Mom was up there smiling down on me?

From behind a potted plant I could see movement on the sidewalk. A black bird hopped a couple inches toward me. Even the most common birds held my attention, partly because my mom was an avid bird-watcher herself.

I had a photo she’d taken of her favorite–a red-winged blackbird–tacked up on the bulletin board over my desk at work.

In free moments, the picture took me back to happy afternoons with my mom, going for walks around the woods by our house and trying to name as many species of birds as we could.

I tried to identify this one.

The bird hopped right up to my shoe. Could it be? A red-winged blackbird! What an unlikely visitor in the middle of a big city. The bird hopped past me and continued along Madison Avenue.

I looked up at the sky and smiled. All those nights staring overhead, I’d missed the signs right on the ground in front of me.

[kuhio98]

Meet the World's First Dog with Four Prosthetic Legs



http://orthopets.com/

[phesina]

Oh, how good and sweet that is! Well done, Orthopets and Naki'o!!!

[kuhio98]

Lost Teddy Bear Tours Disney Before Heading Home to Alabama


Toby the teddy bear isn't just any old stuffed animal to Brooklyn Andrews.

He's a cherished link to a father who died far too young.

"She's slept with it every night since she got it when she was 3 years old," says her mother, Marsha Andrews, 39, of Chunchula, Ala.

It even has a special message in it recorded from her father, Tony Andrews, a police officer who died of a heart attack on duty in 2006.

"She presses the button every night before she goes to bed and listens to her daddy," says Marsha.

So when the 14-year-old girl lost him on a visit to Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa last month, she was devastated.

After we got home "we were unpacking," says Marsha. "And Brooklyn said, 'Where's Toby?' She was freaking out."

Luckily, Mom saved the day. When a phone call to the resort didn't yield any results, she took to social media.

"Very special bear (Toby) is lost!!" wrote Marsha on January 15. "Toby was given to the little girl by her by her daddy before he left for Iraq with his voice recorded in the bear telling her how much he loves her."

Marsha also belongs to a Facebook group for spouses of police officers who have died in the line of duty.

"I posted in there for them to pray," she says. "They were sharing it everywhere."

That posting somehow caught the eye of a Disney employee who called two days later to say they found Toby.

"Brooklyn was ecstatic," she says. "She was jumping up and down."

Disney not only found the bear, they sent him on a fun-filled day around the park before shipping him home with photographs of his adventures.

"She loved it," says Marsha of the photos. "She said the next time she goes to Disney she's going to take him to the park with her and get more pictures."

The whole experience has been amazing, says Marsha.

"I was shocked how much people cared," she says.

"You'd think people would say, 'He's just a bear.' But he's not just a bear to us – and especially to her."

[Karen]

How sweet! I bet the Disney employees were tickled that that got to return him to his person, I am sure they see many lost toys that never get home again!