The good guys thread

[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.”

[kuhio98]

California child falling from window saved by stranger, box spring mattress

Los Angeles (CNN) -- It's the stuff you might expect only to see on TV or in movies -- the upbeat kind with happy endings.

Thankfully, that is just what happened in Burbank, California -- the Southern California city that's home to Warner Brothers and Walt Disney studios -- as a toddler fell from three stories up into a stranger's arms and onto a box spring mattress.

"It feels like I watched a TV show, like it didn't happen to me," Konrad Lightner, who identified himself as the man who caught the child and fell with him, told CNN affiliate KABC.

Sunday was moving day for Lightner and wife Jennifer, a typically exhausting if not momentous endeavor.

Until, that is, they spied a youngster hanging out of a third-story window of an apartment building and called 911.

According to Burbank fire Capt. Peter Hendrickson, calls for help came shortly after 5:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. ET), after witnesses saw the child crawling out of the window.

Enter the box spring.

It was placed under the window, and although Hendrickson did not name the Good Samaritans, the Lightners said it was their mattress and Konrad Lightner's arms that came to the rescue.

The toddler fell only to be caught, and together the toddler and the catcher fell onto the box spring.

Jennifer Lightner told KABC that the whole episode "didn't seem real until he was hanging from (a) chord, because there was no way he was going to get back." It was then, she added, that the couple threw down their box spring mattress.

"It (was) now up to Konrad to catch him," Jennifer Lightner added.

That's exactly what Konrad Lightner said he did, putting his arms around the falling child "and lower(ing) him real fast to the box spring."

Photos taken a short time later and posted on MyBurbank.com showed a man -- clad in a T-shirt, shorts and no shoes -- cradling what appeared to be his child on the box spring. Another shows the same man carrying the child, surrounded by toys like Minnie Mouse and SpongeBob SquarePants dolls and as Jennifer Lightner holds the box spring upright.

The youngster appeared to be dressed in footsie pajamas, with no signs of trauma or obvious injuries.

The child was transported to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said Hendrickson of the Burbank fire department.

Another photo shows a firefighter helping the Lightners carry away their box spring, and one pictures Konrad Lightner being thanked by a firefighter.

Jennifer Lightner described the happening as "very surreal," all the more so considering the couple resumed the mundane task of moving not long after.

"I'm not a hero," her husband told KABC. "I just walked by and just tried to help. Just something happened and were there.

"We were lucky to be there."