The good guys thread

[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."

[kuhio98]

Server’s Note To Patron Who Picked Up Elderly Couple’s Tab Goes Viral

VICTORVILLE (CBSLA.com) — A waitress’ note to a patron who picked up the tab for an elderly couple at a restaurant in Victorville has gone viral.

On Wednesday morning, Kirsten Kinzle paid for a couple’s $30 breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe because she thought her loud party was ruining the duo’s peaceful time together.

“You just see people sometimes that just look like a great couple and they really loved each other,” Kinzle said.

Server Stephanie Miller then wrote Kinzle a note that said she did an amazing thing because the older man recently lost his brother.

“I instantly started crying,” Kinzle said. “I just hope it made them for just a moment happy with that amount of sadness.”

Miller was also having an emotional day because it had been a year to the day that someone she knew had passed away.

“I knew that if I tried to tell her the story myself I would probably start crying like a baby,” Miller said.

The note and story are a hit on Facebook with more than 1,500 likes.

“It really lets you see that there are truly, truly caring people out there now,” Kinzle’s sister said.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video...clipId=9950051

[kuhio98]

The Daily Treat: Shelter Dog Saves Family 2 Weeks After Adoption

Hunter the dog is more than just an adorable face.

Just two weeks after finding a forever home, the husky-mix puppy thanked his adoptive family by rescuing them right back.

The McLarty family, of the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe Woods, say they were awakened around midnight on March 5. Their new 3-month old dog, Hunter, was whining, and so puppy mom Jill McLarty simply thought he needed to go outside.

"She was surprised that Hunter simply sat outside and continued to whine," read a statement from the Michigan Humane Society, according to CBS Detroit.

When Hunter returned to the family bedroom, the dog refused to let up, even as McLarty and her husband tried to sleep. Finally, she got up after the dog was anxiously running in circles.

The pup then led McLarty into the kitchen, where she discovered a gas burner from the stove had been left on – not enough to light it, but enough to emit dangerous fumes, which the family estimated had been escaping for the nearly six hours that passed since they had prepared dinner the night before.

"When she turned the light on, she saw Hunter sitting next to the stove and noticed that one of the gas stove burners was on low, without a flame," the Humane Society said in a statement.

No surprise here: The dog's family was grateful for their furry hero.

"He is the first dog we ever adopted [from the Michigan Humane Society], and I would recommend it to anybody," proud puppy dad Tim McLarty said. "And as cliché as it sounds, the life you save may save yours."

[Karen]

Good boy, Hunter!

[kuhio98]

Purls of wisdom: A daughter finds relief for grief in knitting

At the end of 2008, the unthinkable happened to C.J. Arabia. Her mother — the healthy one who lived on baked chicken and broccoli and who wouldn’t let her kids use a microwave — was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer and given three months to live.

To ease her through grueling chemotherapy, Arabia’s mother took up knitting. When she passed away at 59, Arabia’s brothers gave her their mother’s leftover yarn to keep, though she had never knitted before. But she absolutely knew that was the yarn’s purpose. “I stared at it in the corner,” she said. “It’s weird how a bag of yarn can give you so many feelings.”

So after several months of waiting to start and when YouTube tutorials didn’t do the trick, she took a local knitting class in Los Angeles and has “kind of been knitting excessively ever since.”

There have been hats, scarves, masks for dogs, mittens — anything that strikes her fancy — and she doesn’t follow patterns when making her artwork. The 44-year-old has documented herself knitting everywhere from the Grand Sumo Tournament in Japan to castles in Europe. Her designs are whimsical (a "Clockwork Orange" ski mask), intricate (multicolored hooded capes) and practical (soft, knitted bookmarks). She has given herself carpal tunnel syndrome from all of the knitting, or maybe it was the purling.

But most of all, she has healed her grieving heart. “For me, knitting is like a meditation. It almost takes me out of my head when I can be sad or stressed or anxious … it helps so much.”

She read somewhere that knitting and meditation light up the same parts of the brain, and though she had always had trouble meditating, she finds that “knitting is a way to just kind of float. You’re floating with the waves, just bobbing up and down. That’s how the stitches are for me. That’s all you can think about.”

Arabia’s family and friends have been the beneficiaries of her habit — “If you know me, you have something knitted from me.”

She gives away almost everything she makes. “People tell me I should sell my stuff — and occasionally I do — but I give the vast majority away,” Arabia said. “For one, nobody wants to pay what a hand-knitted item, made with really good natural fibers, is actually worth.”

Yarn is purchased anywhere from $36 a ball to $60 a ball and up through her travels, though her favorite store is Knitty City on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which she calls her “Vatican.”

“Going into a yarn store for me is like kids walking into a toy store,” Arabia said, adding, “I smell the yarns, sometimes I smell the sheep or llama or alpaca or hay. The more natural the fiber, it has little bits of dirt and hay. To me, they’re lucky and I leave them in.”

No scrap is wasted — she will use colorful odds and ends to create vibrant designs. And knitting has become so natural that Arabia doesn’t have to see what she’s doing. “I can feel in the dark if I have made a mistake,” she said. “I can go back and fix the mistake without looking.”

She does have a following in certain Hollywood circles. Her boyfriend is film and television actor Mather Zickel (of “Rachel Getting Married” and recently Showtime’s “Masters of Sex.”) A longtime friend is Janeane Garofalo. She has other famous friends, not that she’ll drop any names. “I live in L.A.,” she said, “it’s just my friends happen to be celebrities.”

While Arabia is a Web engineer by day, she has turned knitting into a way to give back and help others. She has knitted with residents at a local nursing home, many of whom speak languages other than English. “What they all spoke was knitting,” she said. “I could help them with their stitches and it didn’t matter what they spoke.”

In addition, she visits area cancer patients and knits for them. “I can’t cure cancer,” she said. “I can’t cure the pain that my mom was going through. But I can make someone who is suffering a hat and talk to them about colors for a day.”

She creates blankets and beds for shelter cats and dogs through SnugglesProject.org. And she’ll teach anyone who wants to learn how to knit — as long as they show up on time.

“People come up to me when I’m knitting in public and ask me about it. They tell me stories of their grandmas who taught them to knit but they haven’t done it since they were a kid but always think of getting back into it.

“I always encourage them to get back into it and tell them how I learned,” she said. “It’s always a good idea to get back into knitting, and it’s never too late.”

But really, Arabia said, her “knititation” has been therapeutic.

“It can be an escape from sadness, anxiety, fear, or just beating yourself up in your own head, or rehearsing and re-rehearsing old conversations and situations,” she said. “These are things my brain does sometimes, and I’m so grateful to my mom and to all the knitters who have come and gone before for passing this down through the generations. It’s such a beautiful craft.”