On the first night of her two-show run in Denver, Taylor Swift made a generous donation to the Food Bank of the Rockies, which offers over a million meals per week in Colorado. The nonprofit said the donation paid for 75,000 meals. Swift has been donating to food banks across the United States while on her Eras Tour.
Food Bank Rockies tweeted “Amazing news! We’ve received a super generous donation from the amazing @taylorswift13 and her incredible team! This fantastic gift means we can purchase enough food to provide 75,000 nutritious meals! Thank you for supporting food banks across the country, including ours!”
The Food Bank of the Rockies says it’s seeing 40 to 60% more people attending its mobile pantries currently when compared to the same time last year. The nonprofit says it’s distributing enough food daily for over 180,000 meals. Aditi Desai, chief marketing officer at Food Bank of the Rockies said “We are seeing more need now than we ever have before. This is hitting Food Bank of the Rockies’ budget hard. To meet the needs of our neighbors experiencing hunger, we are spending triple what we were pre-COVID on food purchasing every month. We’ve been able to meet the increased demand thanks to the generosity of individuals like Taylor Swift. Her gift will help fuel our work across the Rockies and allow us to distribute more food to our communities. I was shocked and then thrilled by the news! We are grateful for her inspired support in answering the challenge of hunger.”
The gift comes at a time when more people and families are struggling with rising costs of living. Feeding America projects that 1 in 11 people are currently experiencing hunger in the region. Between inflation and the end of many COVID-era relief measures like the SNAP emergency benefit allotment, there is a huge increase in need.
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NBA legend Shaquille O’Neil decided to give a swarm of kids the memory of a lifetime at a Honolulu resort. Although the water was less than waist height for the 7.1-foot-tall man pretended he was drowning and allowed the kids to “save” him. Shaq flopped over on his side, floating listlessly as the group of kids huddled around him to join the rescue.
The kids all pitched in, and 7 of them were needed to turn the giant over onto his back before swimming him to safety. At that point, he stood up and thanked them for saving him. Another vacationer, Daniel Chavez, filmed the amusing scene. Chavez said he felt conflicted about filming the famous LA Lakers center-turned-sports analyst while on vacation.
Chavez said “Part of me was like, hmm, should I film this?” Or, no. 2, should I just enjoy the moments? No. 3, I’m like, he’s relaxing, he’s on vacation, why am I gonna bother this guy’s privacy? But the journalist in me said, ‘No. No, this guy’s being real right now, he’s being such a cool guy. I’m sure people would love to see this side of him.’”
Later in the lobby, Daniel was able to meet Shaq in person, who was “so humble” and even agreed to have a photo with the TikToker. Chavez’s tiktok post has been shared millions of times, once again showing the NBA legend’s fun loving side that endears him to fans.
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Video of a young farmer driving his motorbike with a leopard hog-tied over the rear wheel was initially thought to be footage of the man caught in the act of leopard poaching in India. It’s since been revealed that the man was actually saving the leopard’s life.
The man, Venugopal aka Muttu, from the Hassan District of the Indian state of Karnataka, found the juvenile leopard lying unconscious in the corner of his field. After observing the leopard for some time, Mr. Muttu concluded it was not well, so he summoned up the courage to intervene. He realized it was too exhausted to move, so he brought it back to the village on his motorbike.
Seeing their neighbor with the cat, the villagers immediately called the forest service who got to Muttu, learned of the situation, and sped the leopard off to veterinary care. Officials said the leopard is around 9 months old and appears to have wandered into the area looking for food when it became severely dehydrated.
The leopard is being treated for dehydration and would not have survived without human intervention. When asked about the way Muttu tied the leopard to his bike, Ashish Reddy, an official from the Hassan DCF, said the state was not intending to press charges as the leopard is in stable condition and there was no criminal intent behind Muttu’s actions.
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A man’s huge mistake paid off big in the end after he posted about his accidental donation. A redditor posted the almost-unbelievable story on the r/TIFU subreddit, which has since gone viral. In it, the California resident details an experience donating to a charity on GoFundMe that went sideways in a great way. The reddit post said the incident happened in February of last year met a neighbor who is a retired veteran in his 70s and also a devout Hindu priest.
One day, his neighbor told him about a hunger charity he manages for a community in Bangladesh. Wanting to support his neighbor, he went to the GoFundMe page for the charity, named “Urgent Food Relief Needed: Bangladesh” the next day while he was at work. He made a $150 donation but moments later received a text from his credit card company warning of an unusually large transaction on his credit card. He opened the message to see a payment of $15,041 to GoFundMe.
He immediately panicked and then figured out his mistake. He had accidentally started typing his credit card information while the cursor was still in the donation box, and just like that 150 became 15041. A call to GoFundMe’s customer support secured him a refund, but he was informed it would be processed in 3 to 7 business days and that the charity organizer would be able to see his donation until then.
Michael said he had planned on explaining what happened to his neighbor, the GoFundMe organizer, as soon as he could, but he had a rude awakening the next morning. He woke up to 40+ Facebook notifications with literally hundreds of photos of frail, elderly, disabled, and malnourished individuals holding signs with his name, thanking him for his donation.
Michael said he immediately contacted the organizer explaining the refund but ended up increasing his original donation of $150 to $1,500. The organizer graciously told him $1,500 will still go a long way. The story doesn’t end there, Michael’s reddit post went viral sending more than 3,700 contributors to the fundraiser, with some donating amounts as high as $5,000. A repost of his story on a popular Youtube channel drove even more donations to the charity as well.
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A debut author struggling with sales became Amazon’s No 1 bestseller after a video of the writer at a quiet book signing went viral on TikTok. TikToker Jerrad “Red” Swearenjin, who filmed the interaction, said he approached Shawn Warner because the writer looked “super defeated”. Warner was sitting at a table in a Kroger store in Fort Worth, Texas, behind piled copies of his Young Adult murder mystery, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor.
Swearenjin and his friend started asking him about his novel and why he decided to become an author. Swearenjin can be heard asking Warner to sign a second copy to be given to a TikTok user, adding that he will try to get the writer “a little bit of love” on the social media app. The video, which has now been viewed over 18 million times, shows Warner explaining that the book is “about a teenage girl who teams up with a ghost with multiple personalities to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder.”
The video was posted to TikTok and within 34 hours was flooded with supportive comments and users vowing to buy the book. Warner has worked as an infantry paratrooper, a pediatric therapist and in computer science before becoming an author. “At every stage of my life, people have complimented me on my writing,” he states on his website, but those same people said “you can’t make a living” being an author. “I was dumb enough to listen,” he adds. “So here I am, living out my childhood dream.”
Warner tweeted that the novel became No 1 in Amazon Young Adult sales, and soon after it was No 1 across all book genres. “When Red came up and talked to me, I was just so eager to talk to anybody at that point because there was a lull in my sales,” said Warner in a video response to the book’s success. “What’s happened has been beyond my imagination. I’m so grateful,” the author added in a caption.
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Katherine Johnson wanted to make her lonely 7 year old son Oliver Johnson’s birthday one to remember. Oliver is obsessed with trucks, he knows the name of every truck, every truck manufacturer, and every trucking company. Katherine offered $50 to anyone who would come give him a ride in their big rig for his 8th birthday. She never imagined the outcome of her Facebook post.
Katherine hoped one truck driver would take up the offer, but instead, Barry Hart, owner of Hart Haulage Trucking, saw her offer and decided to organize a whole convoy. Hart put a call out on social media and 34 drivers signed up for Ollie’s birthday convoy. So many signed up that Hart had to organize them like a parade and call authorities to help manage traffic. Hart said that almost twice as many showed up for the bid day.
Hart said all the drivers volunteered to be part of the convoy for young Oliver despite the what it would cost them to get there truck to the meeting point. “Every one of these truckies that are doing this, and there are probably 10 trucks at least that are coming from Auckland, those guys, it will cost them $500-600 to get that truck down there, do their thing, and go away, and not one of them is asking for anything” Hart said.
Even Hart was shocked by the turn out saying he expected 15 to 20 drivers but it just kept growing as word spread. “When it comes to kids, this community, these truckers will always come out. It’s a young fella and we wanted him to know there was a community around him” he said. Ollie’s dad Simon Johnson said they were “literally blown away” by the number of trucks that turned up.
Ollie had absolutely no idea that there would be a truck convoy coming to celebrate his birthday until the trucks turned up. Johnson said “His reaction all day will just be sunshine in everybody’s eyes, he’s still on cloud nine.” Johnson said they also received comments and birthday wishes from all over the world, and they will be forever grateful and humbled by what has taken place.
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Ohio resident Molly Jones was worried about the possibility of leaving her 15-year-old daughter behind in the event of her death from autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. She posted on Facebook asking someone to consider donating a kidney and her plea reached paramedic Kristi Hadfield, who had been Facebook friends with Molly for 6 years, ever since she saved her father’s life.
Molly’s father John Cunningham, a former marine, checked himself into an ambulance authority where Hadfield was stationed as a paramedic in rural Richie County, West Virginia. John said something wasn’t right, and Hadfield figured he needed to be examined at a hospital about 45 minutes away. John went into cardiac arrest enroute to the hospital and Hadfield restarted his heart with chest compressions.
Later, Hadfield sent Cunningham a friend request on Facebook to see how he was doing—and his daughter Molly also connected with Hadfield. Hadfield said when she saw the post, from a Facebook friend she had never met in person she quickly responded- “How do I figure out if I’m a match?” The two woman soon discovered they were both blood type A+. Once Jones was on the transplant list, Hadfield began trying to donate her kidney, something she said she never imagined doing even though she had the box ticked on her driver’s license.
On December 27th, after weeks of kidney dialysis keeping Jones alive, the transplant was a complete success. Hadfield has saved John Cunningham and now saved his daughter too. “This family has just, gosh, they got a piece of my heart. I get emotionally impacted by the patients that I’ve had and this family was just incredible. My kids are grown and I have grandkids now, but I wanted her to be able to see her daughter grow. I wanted her to be able to hold her grandkids” Hadfield said.
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Bubba Nulisch was hospitalized with a bacterial infection and put into a medically induced coma on April 18th. After waking from his coma three weeks later he was devastated to learn his 4 year old dog Bullet was missing. Nulisch had adopted Bullet after being forced to retire from his truck driving job for medical reasons in October 2015 and says the dog pulled him out of a “deep depression.”
On the suggestion of some of the hospital nurses, he immediately took to Facebook and asked for help in lost pet groups in the hope someone had spotted Bullet in the area. Luckily, someone had seen him—43-year-old Kim Joppie who runs a dog rescue in Dallas. Bullet had made it to Joppie’s rescue center on June 4th, and after she learned who he belonged to, she was determined to make sure they were reunited as fast as possible.
Neutered and microchipped, Joppie drove the dog to Grand Prairie, TX out to Bubba and was delighted with what happened after she arrived. “When they were reunited, I can’t describe the pure emotion that came from him. They were so bonded. It was so beautiful, and I’ve never seen anything like it” Kim said.
Nulisch said he adopted Bullet after some friends’ dog had a litter of puppies. “The people I was staying with at the time had a dog who had babies. One of them wouldn’t leave my side ever, I don’t know why but he started hanging out with me, so I adopted him. He was my reason to keep on going. He really helped me through emotionally and brought me so much happiness and joy,” he said. “Him being gone was the hardest part of waking up.” Now, the two are back at home and grateful for everything Kim did to make sure they were reunited.
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Miracle messages is a nonprofit dedicated to helping people experiencing homelessness reunite with their families. The nonprofit offers family reunification services, a phone buddy program, and basic income pilots for people experiencing homelessness. Eddie Thompson Ⅲ, had been struggling with housing insecurity for a decade when he heard about the organization and reached out for help.
He spent years longing to reunite with his son Shay that he hadn’t seen since after his high school graduation. Volunteer Lindsay Pfeiffer took on Eddie’s case and after some days of persistence, she was able to locate Shay and inform him that his father had been actively looking for him. Shay was shocked when he got the call. For the entirety of his adult life, he had been searching for his father. With each passing year, the young man felt the reality of any reunion with his dad slipping away.
The two were reconnected and given a second chance at their relationship—and Shay was beyond grateful to end the years spent apart. Through Lindsay’s coordination, the two finally met in person. Eddie not only found his son, but discovered he has a granddaughter, as well. The father and son are now catching up on all the time they missed.
As many as 1 in 3 people experiencing homelessness have lost their social support systems. Volunteers from around the world can donate just one hour of time as a “digital detective” helping homeless with locating loved ones or as a “phone buddy” offering phone support and mentoring for those experiencing homelessness. The nonprofit provides training, mentoring, and support to all volunteers with a goal of helping those experiencing homelessness have social support.
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A hiker became an unexpected hero while enjoying the scenery of the Multnomah Falls in Oregon. While capturing the surroundings on the hiking trail for his YouTube channel, Taylor Root suddenly heard a desperate call for help. Responding to the cries, he came upon a terrifying sight. A young woman with one arm was desperately clinging to her mother, who was hanging off the cliff’s side.
It was a heart-wrenching scene as the mother begged “Let me go,” fearing her weight would drag her daughter down with her. Both her daughter and Root refused to give up on her. “I’m not!” the daughter insisted. Root then added a reassuring, “No, no, no. You’re not going anywhere.”
With tremendous strength and resolve, Root pulled the woman to safety, literally dragging her from the edge of danger. The young daughter had been holding on to her mother with her only arm, but Root’s intervention turned a potentially tragic situation into a miraculous one. The video ended with a heartwarming scene of the mother and daughter, shaken but safe, embracing each other in relief and gratitude.
Root said he was grateful he happened to be in the right place at the right time that day..He said ironically, earlier in the day he received a prophetic fortune cookie, which he said read “You will have an opportunity to shine this week.” Root’s brave intervention turned what otherwise would have been a tragic ending into an extraordinary rescue.
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