The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Hingham Bakery Customer Surprises Employees With Large Sum Of Money

HINGHAM (CBS) – You may have heard of the phrase “pay it forward.” The employees of a Hingham bakery just got a good taste of it.

Last week, a man walked into White’s Bakery and ordered a danish. While the employee was wrapping up his treat, he reciprocally treated the employees. He put an envelope on the glass counter, paid for his danish, and quickly walked away.

When employees opened the unmarked envelope, they found thousands of dollars. This act of kindness was no accident.

Security cameras captured the whole interaction. But the man, who is about 55-years-old, saw the camera and turned his back to it, masking his identity.

Nobody has come into the bakery claiming to have lost a large amount of money.

[kuhio98]

Local 'Love Bomb Squad' strikes again
Organization does random acts of kindness for community

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WKBT) -

A group of area kids showed its love for others at the La Crosse Public Library Monday evening.

They are called the "Love Bomb Squad" and they leave handmade gifts as a way to spread kindness, peace and joy to others.

“Random acts of kindness makes other people's days and it makes our day to make their day, so it makes everyone happy,” said Abby Sharp, a member of the Love Bomb Squad.

At the library, the kids left handmade painted rocks and bookmarks for unsuspecting guests to find.

“We keep it simple and inexpensive and we want to bring cheer to people and then inspire them to do the same thing and we hope it’s a ripple effect and so the kindness will spread far and wide,” said Stephanie Sharp, the founder and leader of the Love Bomb Squad, and Abby’s mother.

Stephanie Sharp said she was inspired to create the group because of two organizations in Denver: the Random Acts of Kindess Foundation and The Birthday Project.

“I just wanted to make it a little more personal, so I decided to start my own,” Sharp said.

In November 2013, Sharp and her daughter teamed up with some close friends and family to do something special for someone else. Then they brought up the idea to their church, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and encouraged everyone, especially Sunday school kids to do random acts of kindness.

“We painted rocks and wrote post-it notes and then during Random Acts of Kindness week, we 'Love Bombed' the (la Crosse) City Hall a couple of meetings there,” Sharp said. “We went to hospitals and nursing homes and a knitting group at church started knitting scarves and we have a person that makes tabs for them and then puts them around downtown for the statues and they say, ‘I’m not lost. If you’re cold, please take me.’”

Sharp said they don’t usually see people’s reaction when they get Love Bombed, but when they do there are mixed reactions.

“Most of the time it’s confusion because I don’t think people expect a stranger to come up and do something kind. I think that sometimes they’re nervous but I think after they realize what it is, it makes them smile.”

"If you were walking home and it was cold and you had a bad day at work and suddenly you found a painted rock that says you are loved, it would make your day a little better," said Abby Sharp.

The members of the Love Bomb Squad hope they inspire people in the community to start doing their own random acts of kindness.

“Keep the kindness going because I think the world needs that,” Stephanie Sharp said.

For more information on the Love Bomb Squad, visit the organization’s website, Lovebombsquad.com or Love Bomb Squad Facebook page.

[kuhio98]

Deer Heroes.

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Widow Performs 318 Random Acts Of Kindness In Tribute To Husband’s Cancer Fight

BOSTON (CBS) – For 318 days, Chad Wogernese fought a brave battle against cancer. His widow, Colleen, says during his fight, she learned so much about love. On Friday, she performed 318 random acts of kindness to give back to those who made a difference in his life.

“It mostly just makes me happy and gives me a good memory of him,” the former Northeastern grad student says.

Chad was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma on the couple’s second wedding anniversary and spent the last 318 days of his life shuttling back and forth between their Wisconsin home and Boston, getting treatment for that deadly cancer. He died in September.

“I never heard a complaint, I never heard a ‘why me,’” Colleen says.

And so to honor his memory, and return a favor, Colleen returned to Boston for the random acts of kindness.

She started at Brigham and Women’s Hospital with gift bags for staffers who had helped Chad, but then moved on to strangers, with free Charlie Cards, lottery tickets, candy and even hand-knit caps.

Colleen knows her sons Ethan and Nolan won’t remember much about their dad, and so missions like these are a good lesson for them.

“He was just so giving, I want my children to know how giving he was and this was the best way to show them,” Colleen says.

And so she is determined to dispense kindness, feeling that when she does — her husband is right there with her.

“I want to live the rest of my life that way, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for myself, turn it into something good,” she says.

Before Chad died, he and Colleen started “Superheroes Fighting Cancer” to help families with a loved one battling a serious illness.

The non-profit hopes to raise $40,000 dollars this year.

[kuhio98]

Good Samaritan Meets Baby She Rescued 26 Years Ago

Every day, Shelley Cumley looks forward to the email she receives from Godvine, a Christian website, which is filled with videos of inspirational real people stories.

Sometimes she watches them. Sometimes she doesn't. Last October, though, one caught her eye.

"I saw a picture of a baby and clicked on it," she told Sacramento's News10. "I love to watch baby videos," she told the station, "and the very first frame that came on the video was her name."

It was the story of Nicole Farley, now 26, who'd been paralyzed as an infant when a drunk driver plowed into her mother's car in March 1988.

Cumley had been the good Samaritan who pulled the baby from the wreckage.

"I absolutely couldn't believe it," Cumley, 51, of Snohomish, Wash., tells PEOPLE, her voice shaking. "This was a little girl I'd worried about and prayed for."

She watched the video until the end.

"It was the most incredible, beautiful story," she says, "about a girl who is not bitter; had not let her disability hold her back. She's persevered, lived life to the fullest."

The Day of the Accident
That day had haunted Cumley for years. She was on her way to Lake Tahoe with a friend when she came upon the accident on Interstate 5 near Redding, Calif. Nicole's mother, Roanna, was pinned inside.

"I went to her door to see if I could open it but I couldn't," she says. "Her steering wheel was up by her face."

Suddenly, she heard a baby crying.

"I looked in the back and saw this infant in a carseat," he says. "The car was so completely demolished that we thought the thing was going to blow up any second."

Cumley quickly lifted Nicole from her carseat and held her while Roanna drifted in and out of consciousness, screaming for her daughter.

"I held Nicole to her window – her window was broken out – and I said, 'Open your eyes and look at your baby,' " Cumley says. "'She's fine.' "

She kept doing this until help arrived.

"She'd open her eyes and see Nicole and it would calm her down and she'd lose consciousness," says Cumley. "Then she'd wake up and start screaming for her again like she forgot this happened."

Cumley rode in the ambulance with Nicole and waited while the doctors checked her out.

"They said she was fine," she says.

Cumley reluctantly headed back to her weekend away in Lake Tahoe but unable to get thoughts of the baby and her mother out of her head, she cut the trip short so she could stop by the hospital on her way home and check on them.

The nurses told her that Roanna was in critical condition but recovering, while Nicole was paralyzed from the armpits down.

"I just really almost fell down," she says, breaking into tears at the memory. "I was so devastated. I said, 'When I left here two or three days ago they said she was fine.' The nurse said, 'Yeah, they discovered her feet weren't moving and did some further testing, and she's paralyzed," she says.

Cumley started crying.

"I thought by removing her from her carseat I made her injuries worse," she says. "We headed back to Seattle that day and I could hardly function for a few days."

Cumley called Roanna a few months later to check on them but didn't have the heart to ask her if she'd caused her daughter's paralysis.

So when Nicole's video landed in her inbox, Cumley decided to reach out to Nicole herself. She saw Nicole was clutching a business card in her hand in the video and zeroed in on her email address.

"I am tearful as I write this for so many reasons," Cumley wrote. "I have struggled over the years second-guessing myself and wondering if by pulling you out of the car, I made your injuries worse. It has haunted me."

Nicole froze when she read it.

"I almost dropped the phone," Nicole, who runs a daycare in her Yuba City, Calif., home, tells PEOPLE. "I burst into tears. Not because I was sad, but it was this burst of emotion. I was excited. I was overwhelmed."

Her reply lifted a heavy burden from Cumley. Nicole told her that the doctors said her injuries happened on impact.

"I have cried more in the last three months than I've cried in my whole life," Cumley says. "It has been a huge season of healing for me."

The two have become fast friends, and last month they met for the first time as adults. "It was very effortless," says Nicole of their first meeting. "I think it's because we have this special connection because of that day, even though I was an infant. I feel like I've always known her."

Cumley says she simply feels at peace for the first time in 26 years.

"I feel like my faith is stronger than ever," says Cumley, "because you hear about miracles, but when it happens to you, it's life changing."

[kuhio98]

Huntsville Students Aim to Collect 5,000 Pairs of Shoes for Developing Countries

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – Members of a new service club at New Century Technology High School are trying to round up shoes — lots of shoes — like 5,000 pairs.

They’re trying to bring something taken for granted in America to places where they’re considered a hot commodity.

These members of the Beta Club don’t need to walk in the shoes of people in third world countries to know what they need. They’ve researched it.

“One woman, she couldn’t breast feed her child and she traded a pair of shoes for a goat so she could feed her baby,” said Cailin Simpson, an organizer of the shoe drive. “So that’s how rare of a commodity these shoes are in developing nations.

The 16-year-old junior at New Century Technology High School said all kinds of shoes are needed.

“Any type of shoes, heeled shoes, children’s shoes, adult shoes.. any shoes are acceptable.”

She said companies will even repair or recycle shoes that aren’t up to par.

Simpson and her classmates are trying to collect the shoes to send to countries in West Africa, South America and Central America. “We buy a new pair of shoes to match our outfit. And we don’t think about other people who don’t have those means.”

The school didn’t just stop at asking for shoes from their own students.

“Our members have been going to their churches, to their youth group, they’ve been reaching out all over the place trying to get shoes to donate, just trying to get people in Huntsville to think about others,” said Regina Oliver, another member of the Beta Club at New Century.

Oliver said they approached and recruited 10 other schools in Huntsville to participate in the drive.

And the club sponsor is thrilled with how the students recognize need beyond the United States’ border.

“They don’t think about themselves,” said Assistant Principal and Beta Club sponsor Veronica Haley. “They put themselves out there for others.”

Haley says she’ll see to it the shoe drive is an annual event for the newly-formed Beta Club.

The shoe drive goes through Wednesday, March 19th. Students will accept shoes outside the school on Saturday, March 15th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the school, located at 2700 Meridian Street.

Delivery pickup will be Friday, March 21st, by the organization “funds-2-orgs”.

[kuhio98]

Teen Gives 4,000 Soccer Balls to Kids Around the World Who Can't Afford Them

One minute, 10-year-old Ethan King was standing alone, kicking his soccer ball around a dusty, deserted field during a trip to Mozambique, and the next, dozens of kids were playing soccer with him.

"It was crazy," says the Grand Haven, Mich., resident. "Everyone was screaming and laughing and having fun."

That's when it hit him, he says, "how much joy a single soccer ball could bring." After a couple of kids showed him their soccer balls, made of balled-up trash bags and twine, the competitive soccer player says, "I felt really bad knowing that I had seven soccer balls in my garage back home and these kids didn't even have one or have access to buy one."

Since that day in 2009, King resolved to change that. King, who had been visiting the country for two weeks with his dad, started by giving away his soccer ball, the first of 4,000 balls that have been hand-delivered to kids in 22 countries since King, now 14 and a high school freshman in Michigan, began Charity Ball in 2010.

"This came from the heart," says his father, Brian King, 44, an executive director at Vox United, who was repairing water wells in Mozambique, when Ethan discovered his passion for giving. His mom Lorie, 45, says, "We just fanned the flame."

It was Ethan, who called corporations asking for donations, and spoke to kids and parents about Charity Ball's mission, on the sidelines of soccer games. For a $25 donation, Charity Ball guarantees that a brand new soccer ball will be hand-delivered to kids who can't afford to buy one.

Individual donors, corporations and other groups can also sign up to deliver balls through the website charityball.org. "Anyone can apply to take soccer balls with them to a place they are traveling to," explains Ethan, who returned to Mozambique last summer to help organize a soccer tournament and deliver balls.

Kids like Marques Nhongonheia, 10, and Divino Filipe, 11, from Mozambique, are among the recipients. "Now I own a ball that I can share with my friends and have a team for kids our age," says Filipe.

Says Nhongonheia: "Now we are playing with the same type of ball. I am just like one of those players we watch on television. The ball I received from Charity Ball has inspired me to take soccer seriously. "

To date, the nonprofit, first created at the Kings' kitchen table, has inspired 75 corporations and 1,000 people to help hand deliver soccer balls to kids in developing countries.

"I've learned you don't have to be a celebrity or be a certain age to make a difference," says Ethan. "I just wanted to do more because I knew I could."