The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Second Helping: Cafe Gives Juvenile Offenders Second Chance

DALLAS — This is one place that will give you a second chance. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was on hand to break bread and officially welcome Cafe Momentum to Thanksgiving Square downtown.

“It’s so important for our business to understand that greatness can come from tough times,” Mayor Rawlings said.

It may look like your typical corner cafe, but this place has something special that isn’t on the menu.

“Our running joke at Cafe Momentum is that we take kids out of jail and teach them to play with knives and fires — and makes Dallas a better community,” Cafe Momentum Executive Chef Chad Houser said.

Yeah, you heard right. For the past five years, Cafe Momentum has taken 160 young men from juvenile detention centers and given them the chance to get real world work experience, serving up something other than jail time.

“We’re seeing kids that never thought they would have hope, didn’t have inspiration in life, actually going on to great things,” Houser said.

Tamarrion Washington is one of those kids. “When I was 14, I committed a crime, and I ended up going to JDC,” he said.

It took going to a detention center for Washington to realize he was definitely on the wrong path. But that was then, and this is now.

“I learned how to, you know, go to work, come home and take care of my daughter,” Washington said. Eight-month-old Leah is his biggest motivator.

“I want her to know that she do have a father, you know, and that her dad always been there, since day one for her,” he said.

And this dad is now getting the momentum he needs to turn his life around.

[kuhio98]

Norwalk High School Students Get Lesson In Giving Back, Raise $20K For Charity

NORWALK (CBSLA.com) — Several high school seniors Tuesday donated more than $20,000 to several charities as part of a fundraising project at Norwalk High School.

According to school officials, each student researched a variety of charities and presented the organization they felt connected to within their government classes.

When presentations concluded, every class voted for a specific charity as the recipient of their fundraising efforts.

The following charities were chosen as recipients: Autism Research Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Doorway for Women and Families, Dream Big Project, National Hemophilia Foundation, National Kidney Foundation, Rady Children’s Hospital, Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, Susan G. Komen Foundation, Relay for Life, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

Around 10:15 a.m., students presented representatives of the 12 charities with checks inside the school gymnasium.

Many seniors were personally affected by the issues that the selected charities address. Students explained their reasoning for the selection of each charity.

Two students — Arianna Real, whose mother is on dialysis, and Jian Bravo, whose little sister had her kidney replaced to treat cancer — presented a check for $1,500 to the National Kidney Foundation.

“My sister was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age. We weren’t sure if she was going to make it or not because she developed a tumor that was the size of a football ,” Bravo said.

As of Monday, the students raised more than $20,000 for the charities in only three weeks, doubling their original goal of $10,000 officials explained.

[kuhio98]

Brooke Thomas Gives Away 1,000 Lunches a Week to Needy Kids

Brooke Thomas remembers being just seven while going through the lunch line at Centennial Elementary School in Dade City, Florida, and catching her friends staring at her full tray.

"They didn't have money in their account and I felt bad so I bought them food,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Her mom, Dianna Thomas, had no idea what was going on.

"Brooke was going through the lunch money in her account so quickly – quicker than you normally would – so I started asking her what she was buying," Dianna, 42, tells PEOPLE.

"It turned out she was buying food for some of her peers at school," she says. "I realized it was happening on more than one occasion, and that's when we realized the issue with hunger in the area."

It turns out more than seventy-five percent of the kids at Brooke's school are on free and reduced lunches, so the family decided to do something more permanent to help.

They came up with the idea for what is now The Thomas Promise Foundation, a non-profit that has packed 200,000 meals – about 1,000 every week – for schoolkids in the Tampa area since its inception in 2012.

Brooke, now an 11-year-old who takes dance and horseback riding lessons, also spends several days a week at The Thomas Promise headquarters helping load backpacks full of food.

Her teachers say the adorable and bubbly blonde is an inspiration to her classmates.

"I wish I had more students like Brooke in the building that looked at life like she does," Peggy Gilbert, her third-grade teacher, tells PEOPLE.

"She is the student that the other students know they can go to if they need anything," she says.

"I think the foundation is remarkable," she says. "I watch these kids go home with food that they might not have access to on the weekends and to know this all stemmed from Brooke's young mind, it just blows me away."

Each week, volunteers at The Thomas Promise Foundation pack and give away about a thousand backpacks filled with enough food to get students at 19 elementary and middle schools through the weekend.

They also offer a food pantry to the high school students in the area.

Dianna now runs the foundation. Brooke's father, Wade Thomas, 44, the owner of a local car dealership, donated an empty building on his property that now serves as the foundation's headquarters.

Area businesses donate money that the Thomas Promise then uses to shop with their partner, Feeding America, getting food at drastically reduced prices.

When Christy Cook, a mother of two boys, lost her husband – her high school sweetheart and the family's sole provider – she could barely pay the bills.

The Thomas Promise gave the family food and school supplies for weeks.

"They helped us in our time of need," Cook, 40, of Zephyrhills, Florida, tells PEOPLE.

"We lost everything," she says. "They didn't have to help us. They went above and beyond. What an amazing little girl."

Dianna is amazed at how her daughter has stayed so involved in the cause over the years.

"I'm very proud of her," she says. "It was very nice to see that she was so compassionate and so concerned at such a young age.

"You hope you're raising them to be compassionate," she says, "but to really see her want to make sure kids are receiving everything they need, she is just a great kid."

As for Brooke, she's just glad she's able to help other kids.

"I feel good knowing they have food to eat over the weekend," she says.

[mon]

Everone should be proud of Brooke, I am.

[kuhio98]

Recovered Shelter Cat Spends His Time Helping Other Animals Heal

He may have the best bedside manner in the game. Meet Rademenes the healer cat of Poland's Bydgoszcz Animal Shelter.

The doting black feline first arrived at the shelter as a patient, according to the New York Post. Rademenes was dropped off with a serious respiratory infection. His chances of recovery looked bleak for a while, but the feline pulled through.

After helping to save Rademenes's life, veterinarian Lucyna Kuziel-Zawalich decided to keep the kitty and let him hang around the shelter. That's when Rademenes started doing something rather remarkable.

Without any prompting, the cat started sitting with and comforting animals recovering at the shelter. The nurse cat now spends his days cozying up to cats and dogs who just got out of surgery, helping them stay calm and feel loved.

Ear licks, hugs, nuzzles and purrs are just a few of Rademenes's many affectionate treatment plans. Love is the best medicine, indeed.

[momcat]

What a wonderful story and what a beautiful kitty! This story absolutely made my day. I'd love to give him non stop lovies

[Felicia's Mom]

Rademenes is a wonderful cat.

[kuhio98]

Another article on Radamenes. http://blog.theanimalrescuesite.com/...0420113838.jpg

Recovered Shelter Cat Spends His Time Helping Other Animals Heal

He may have the best bedside manner in the game. Meet Rademenes the healer cat of Poland's Bydgoszcz Animal Shelter.

The doting black feline first arrived at the shelter as a patient, according to the New York Post. Rademenes was dropped off with a serious respiratory infection. His chances of recovery looked bleak for a while, but the feline pulled through.

After helping to save Rademenes's life, veterinarian Lucyna Kuziel-Zawalich decided to keep the kitty and let him hang around the shelter. That's when Rademenes started doing something rather remarkable.

Without any prompting, the cat started sitting with and comforting animals recovering at the shelter. The nurse cat now spends his days cozying up to cats and dogs who just got out of surgery, helping them stay calm and feel loved.

Ear licks, hugs, nuzzles and purrs are just a few of Rademenes's many affectionate treatment plans. Love is the best medicine, indeed.

[kuhio98]

From People Magazine Heroes Among Us: 'SoupMan' David Timothy Has Provided More Than a Million Meals to Dallas's Hungry

Every weekday at lunch time, a white van pulls up in a nondescript parking lot in south Dallas.

People expect it. The van – called the SoupMobile – has never missed a single lunch in 11 years. And it makes quite an entrance, with the Rocky theme song blaring from the speakers.

"There's a method to the madness with the song," says David and Timothy, founder of SoupMobile.

"It's a story of hope about someone who's down and out, and who literally rose to the top. Our message is that you, too, may be down and out, but with hard work and perseverance, you can also rise up out of that."

SoupMobile's mission is to reach out to the homeless and feed them. Since 2003, Timothy and his band of volunteers have served 600 meals a day to those who are hungry. That adds up to about 1.7 million plates of hot, nutritious food. And counting.

"It's way beyond, 'Here's a bowl of soup,' " says Timothy, who is known around town as the SoupMan. "We consider the homeless to be our friends and family."

Before he became SoupMan, Timothy, 66, was living a more conventional lifestyle as a pension consultant.

"I think most people would have said I was a decent person," he recalls. "But everything in my life was pretty much focused on myself. I was not helping my fellow man. It wasn't rewarding."

Having grown up poor, one of four children raised by a divorced mom in Detroit, "I experienced hunger first-hand as a child," he recalls. "I have vivid memories of that – and not just memories of being hungry."

"A lot of nights, dinner was two pieces of white bread and butter, with sugar sprinkled on it. And when we had cereal, it was with water poured on it. To this day, I still eat my cereal with water."

Although he often went to bed hungry, that isn't the most difficult memory: "The hardest part was seeing my mother going through all of that pressure and stress. It tore her apart to send us to bed hungry."

His childhood is one of the main reasons Timothy is so passionate about feeding the homeless today, because he knows what extreme hunger feels like."

"Everybody can understand if you skip a meal. But you and I know we're going to get that next meal. When I was a child, we didn't know if there would be a next meal. So it's not just the hunger, but the fear that went along with that."

In 2003, Timothy asked by a friend what he truly wanted to do with his life. His reply: "I want to feed the homeless." So he quit his corporate job, bought a 1985 van (the "Soup 1") with more than 250,000 miles on it, gathered up a few volunteers and started serving the hungry.

His wife, Peggy, was on board for the life change from the start. Although she passed away from multiple sclerosis a little more than a year after the SoupMobile started, "every time I get in and start the vehicle, I feel her there with us," Timothy says.

During lunch service, which gets going quickly thanks to an advance team that sets up the tables, Timothy and his staff greet the people in line with hugs and laughter. There are no limits on how many times someone can go through the line; they can continue filling up as long as there is food on the tables.

One afternoon, Timothy recalls, a homeless man approached him after lunch and thanked him for the meal, as often happens.

"He said, 'I hadn't eaten for awhile, so I was really hungry. I want to help you; I want to donate something.' " Timothy insisted it wasn't necessary.

"But he reached into the pocket of his threadbare blue jeans and gave me all that he had, which was nine cents," Timothy says. "Nine pennies, and he gave them to me. It was all I could do not to have tears in my eyes. It was the best donation I've ever received."

Timothy has seen first-hand the transformations that can occur with a little assistance and belief in someone. SoupMobile's head chef, Thomas Waters, 59, was homeless himself for years. After learning about the SoupMobile, he worked up the nerve to ask for a different kind of help.

"I came in one day and just asked him for a chance," says Waters, who grew up poor and started stealing cars when he was still in school. "I'd hit rock-bottom, and it was the hardest thing to face. You feel lost when you don't have any help."

When Timothy learned that Waters had experience as a cook, he offered him the job as head chef for SoupMobile.

"By the grace of God, he gave me a second chance," Waters says. "I told him he'd never regret it – and he tells me all the time that he doesn't."

When he's out serving meals these days, "people come up to me to say thank you," Waters says. "It feels great to give back. Anybody can receive, but giving back is the most important thing."

Back at the SoupMobile headquarters in a nondescript building in downtown Dallas, Timothy sits at his desk, surrounded by Rocky memorabilia.

Timothy, who draws a salary now but was paid a dollar for the first two years, has a staff of about five to 10 people, depending on the time of year. Although he's the boss, his chair, however, doesn't seem too comfortable; it's held together by what appears to be duct tape.

Lon Ricker, the foundation's director of development, has been one of many to offer to buy him a new one, "but [Timothy] says, 'No, no, no,'" Ricker says. "It helps him to remember his roots."

"This chair goes back to the founding of the SoupMobile," Timothy explains. "It helps keep me humble and to remember it's not about me."

"We've all heard the expression, 'There but by the grace of God go I,'" he adds. "We've changed that to, 'There go I.' We're the same. We're all just people trying to make their way in this life."