Audrey Soape, 11, lost her father and grandfather last year and was feeling sad about the upcoming daddy-daughter dance at her church in Round Rock, Texas. Audrey’s mom, Holly, wanted to do something special for her daughter, so she reached out to their favorite NFL player, Anthony Harris, to ask if he would take Audrey to the dance and Harris said yes.
Holly said she knew it was a far-fetched idea to ask “I just asked if he would come—if he’d be willing to come. And he said, ‘not only will I come, I want to make sure she feels like a princess.”
Harris of the Philadelphia Eagles covered the cost of Audrey’s dress, shoes, hair, and makeup and traveled to Texas to escort his young fan to her daddy-daughter dance.
The Philadelphia Eagles safety and Audrey’s mother aren’t exactly strangers. Harris said Holly often reached out to him on social media through The Anthony Harris Foundation to ask how her family could pray for him. “Asking if I need any prayers through transitions,” he said. “It was really just them opening their arms.”
Holly, a mom of two, said in an interview that she was so anxious and excited for her daughter because she just had the most terrible year. “For someone to show up and to teach her that people do show up for you, it’s just been beyond a blessing. Just the power of God and how he makes these situations happen has just been unbelievable and remarkable.”
Holly wrote an Instagram post about the evening. “Through the grace of God, and amazing generosity of the Anthony Harris Foundation, my girl got escorted by her favorite Philadelphia Eagles player Anthony Harris. From start to finish, this evening was made magical, starting with him getting her the dress and shoes of her dreams.”
Holly wrote that Harris was so kind and so sweet, making the entire evening a fairy tale, the smile never left her daughter’s face. Harris said “You’ve got to cherish these moments. You never know how long we have here on this earth. The people that you care about and the people you love, show support for them.”
Harris started the nonprofit, The Anthony Harris Foundation with the mission to empower youth through sports, education, and mentorship. Harris said his goal is to give kids the same opportunities he had growing up. The foundation has provided meal distributions holiday gift drives in the Philadelphia community. Through several partnerships he has blessed foster families with Holiday meals and Christmas presents.
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Thirty years after his final season as a running back for the University of Notre Dame, Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis is back at his alma mater to finish his college degree. Bettis “The Bus”, 49, made a promise to his mother to get his college degree 18 years after retiring from a legendary career with the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers. Now he months away from getting his Business degree and fulfilling that promise.
Bettis left early for the NFL draft after his junior season with Notre Dame and was selected 10th overall in the first round by the Rams in 1993. The NFL’s eighth all-time leading rusher once plowed right through the heart of defenses and is now about to be part of the graduating class of 2022. He already has a Super Bowl ring and will soon add a diploma to his list of accomplishments.
Most of his entire college and NFL career came before most of the current students were born but his classmates all know who he is. Bettis said he is a dinosaur in the sense of school and struggles with the technology but said he’s a much better student because he wants to learn. He said “I promised my mother that I would get my degree. In my immediate family, I’ll be the first person to graduate from college. But most importantly, I have two children. For them to see dad finish a commitment that he set out some 27 years ago, for me to complete that, I think it says a lot to them.”
His mother, Gladys, is a breast cancer survivor who famously starred alongside her son in Campbell’s Chunky Soup commercials in the early 2000s. His father, Johnnie Bettis, died at 61 from a heart attack in 2006. Bettis is the only one of the 21 players from his original football class at Notre Dame who has not gotten his degree and he is looking forward to seeing his mother beaming with pride as he gets his diploma.
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The heroic actions of a six-year-old boy are also being hailed by his community, including local firefighters. Kayden Reid saved his sister, Kaycee, from being hit by a car recently — but he himself, as a result, was hit by that same car and had to be briefly hospitalized., received a hero’s welcome when he returned from the hospital after rescuing his sister.
Kayden saved his 2 year old sister, Kaycee, from being hit by a car when she ran out into the road but he himself was hit by the car. The boy luckily only suffered a few scratches and needed a few stitches before he was released from an area hospital. His mother Kayla Giles said “By the time everybody else saw Kaycee in the street, Kayden was right there … He ran right into the street to save her. But in the process of getting her out of the way, he got hit by the car. We’re just thankful that we have both kids home and safe today. “
The children’s aunt, Kendra Nettles said the driver of the vehicle stopped to make sure the children were all right. “It wasn’t her fault,” Nettles said, “We’re just thankful that she stopped when she did to make sure that everything is OK with him and us.” Mobile Fire-Rescue Public Information Officer Steven Millhouse said “He’s definitely a hero, he’s got the heart of a hero. As a six-year-old young man, for Kayden to be able to recognize what was happening and to react the way he did … he’s definitely a beacon for our future.”
When Kayden returned from the hospital, Mobile Fire/Rescue came by to congratulate the elementary schooler on his good deed and give him some insight into the work that career heroes like firefighters do. The firefighters gave him a tour of the fire truck and allowed him to sit in the driver’s seat.
Little Kaycee celebrated her second birthday just a few days after the near tragic event. Kayla said it was an extra special celebration given how differently things could have turned out if it weren’t for Kayden. “We are so proud of Kayden’s heroic actions that he did for his baby sister,” she said. “You know, these days it’s really hard for a six-year-old to stop what they’re doing and save their sibling. That lets us know that we are doing right by our kids. We are so thankful to have both of them here. It brought our family a lot closer … so we’re just thankful both kids are still here safe and sound. God is good.”
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A Vietnam war combat veteran in San Antonio received a new home thanks to the non-profit Operation Triage. The home belonged to Jesse Herrera’s late mother and was Herrera’s childhood home. It had fallen into disrepair when Herrer’s daughter reached out for help. The original structure was demolished and Herrera’s new home is now tailor made to his needs and now up to state standards.
President and founder of Operation Triage, Daniel Vargas said “We found out about Jesse about a year ago, he said his home was in disarray and needed some repairs. We came in and looked and basically the home needed to be condemned. It was his childhood home and his kids have been raised here.”
Herrera, 76, served in Vietnam from February 1965 – February 1969 and was wounded twice in action. Like many veterans returning home from Vietnam, Jesse faced a constant daily struggle trying to return to civilian life and it took many years of treatment and therapy to find his new normal. In 2007 Jesse moved back to his childhood home to care for his ailing mother who then passed away in 2015.
Operation TRIAGE got involved with Jesse at that time and through a lot of legal work was finally able to get the property in Jesse’s name. They teamed up with Jon Wayne Service Company, contributors, and other donors to provide Vietnam Veteran Jesse Herrera and his daughter a new home where his childhood home once stood.
Operation Triage was founded in 2016 and is based in New Braunfels, TX. Their mission is to provide emergency financial relief, mortgage free homes, or home remodeling to disabled veterans, first responders and active duty service members. They believe by removing any emergency financial and other burdens from these heroes we may help turn the tide of suicide and promote Family balance. They partner with corporate sponsors, builder associations, builders, developers, individual contributors, and volunteers to help heroes and their families succeed in their challenging new world so they may ultimately enjoy a productive and rewarding life. They work with other Veteran Service Organizations (VSO’s) to help identify and expedite assistance for shelter needs and mobility.
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Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey joined forces to donate a combined $15 million to 18 different climate justice groups in the U.S. and Caribbean. The recipients of the grants are 18 grassroots organizations within the US and Caribbean that are centered and led by minoritized communities.
Some of the organizations include the Solutions Project, which supports grassroots-level solutions, the Indigenous Environmental Network, which supports Indigenous tribes and communities in protecting sacred sites and natural resources, and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, which focuses on tracking and improving environmental threats at the neighborhood level.
Rihanna founded CLF to “support and fund groundbreaking education and climate resilience initiatives” in 2012. One of its first initiatives, which launched a year after the foundation began, raised $60 million for women and children affected by HIV/AIDS through sales from the singer’s lipstick line with MAC Cosmetics. In 2020, it raised $36 million for organizations on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic and another $11 million for programs trying to reform the police and criminal justice systems.
Dorsey started #StartSmall LLC in April 2020 to “fund global Covid-19 relief” and “girl’s health and education, and universal basic income.” He funded the initiative with $1 billion in shares from his fintech company Block, formerly known as Square, which he founded in 2009. At the time, that amount accounted for 28% of the tech giant’s net worth. His initiative has donated over $448 million to more than 250 organizations, including NYU’s Cash Transfer Lab, Water.org and the Malala Fund.
This isn’t the unlikely pair’s first collaboration. Since the beginning of the pandemic, #StartSmall and CLF have donated roughly $57 million to similar causes, as well as natural disaster preparedness resources, rental assistance for low-income families and services for domestic violence victims and survivors. The two entrepreneurs have found common ground in philanthropy, using their wealth to support people left vulnerable by climate change. Their most recent charitable act is in part a response to the devastating hurricanes that have ravaged the home region of the Caribbean in recent years.
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Ingka Group, the owners of the IKEA furniture chain, just bought 3,264 acres of forest in Florida that had been destroyed by a hurricane in order to restore it with longleaf pine. The land near Florida’s Apalachicola River was damaged by Hurricane Michael. According to the Florida Forest Service via the National Weather Service, Michael’s heavy winds damaged approximately 3 million acres of forested land in Florida worth $1.2 billion dollars.
The land is named Tupelo Honey, and Ingka has plans to treat the new purchase as an afforestation project. The company’s commitment to carbon neutrality has gradually accumulated more than 600,000 forested acres in the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand to offset the CO2 released during its entire value chain.
In a statement, Ingka Group said “The new forests will support increased biodiversity, help ensure sustainable timber production from responsibly managed forests, and recover land damaged by Hurricane Michael in October 2018. The afforestation business… is a long-term investment that consolidates our business while also positively impacting the climate through the absorption of CO2 during the forests’ growth.”
Ingka Group’s goal, set out in 2020, is to eliminate their carbon footprint. Today more than 98% of the wood used for IKEA products is either FSC-certified or recycled. If the retail giant can keep the forests healthy and alive, in 40 years they will pull carbon out of the air equal to a certain percentage of the carbon placed into the atmosphere by IKEA’s operations, while providing valuable habitat to vulnerable species like the red-cockaded woodpecker, gopher tortoise, pine snakes, and dusky gopher frogs.
In 2021, IKEA bought 11,000 acres in Georgia that had been damaged by Hurricane Michael to stop it from being clear-cut and developed. In that instance Ingka teamed up with The Conservation Fund to create working forests that are harvested and regenerated sustainably to save the cost of managing them, while also being placed along important biodiversity corridors, or to stop habitat fragmentation.
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A WWII POW was presented with a high school diploma, fulfilling a wish 80 years in the making. Kevin Litterer, principal of East Sac High School in Lake View, Iowa said it all started when he received a phone call on November 18, 2021. He recalls his assistant answering it and jumping up. “Kevin, you need to speak to this person right now,” she told him.
Tess Gooding, a medical social worker at the San Angelo Veterans Affairs Clinicin in Texas was on the line. Gooding explained that during her initial assessment, a new patient of hers, Donald J. Huisenga. The 98-year-old WWII veteran had said that he hadn’t graduated high school. He was supposed to receive a diploma from Auburn High School (now East Sac High School) in 1943. Three months before he was set to walk across the stage, however, he was drafted into the Army.
Huisenga was injured in artillery fire during the Normandy Invasion and two weeks later, he found himself in a German prisoner of war camp where he was held for six months. Huisenga left the Army in 1945, got married, had children and eventually moved to Texas. He had told Gooding that he was always haunted by the high school diploma he never got. Gooding said “He was telling me about his time as a prisoner of war, at which point he mentioned that he had never graduated high school. I thought, ‘You know, I’ll just reach out to the high school back in Iowa.’ I’m originally from the area. Worst case scenario, they’ll say no.”
Litterer immediately reached out to the company that provides East Sac High School with yearbooks, diplomas, class rings, and other memorabilia. With help from school officials, he was able to locate old copies of Auburn High School graduation materials to help them replicate a Class of 1943 diploma. In two hours, he had everything he needed and four days later, trustees with the East Sac County School Board of Education voted unanimously to name Huisenga a graduate of Auburn High School.
Litterer and his wife drove from Iowa to San Angelo so he could award Huisenga the diploma himself during a special ceremony at the San Angelo Veterans Affairs Clinic on January 5. After the ceremony, Huisenga said “I made it. I always hoped that I would get a diploma. I am pleased as punch. I’m so pleased, I couldn’t be any more pleased.” Huisenga invited Litterer to his home to show him where he planned to display the diploma: in a bookcase right next to the television.
Huisenga even invited Litterer and his wife to celebrate his 100th birthday on September 20, 2023. Litterer says of his new friend “He is just so amazing to me. His outlook on life is incredible. And for me, as a high school principal, next time a kid says they’re thinking about dropping out of high school I will show them a picture of Donald so they can see how much it means.”
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A New Hampshire pup is a real life hero after leading help to the crash site of her owner on a snowy stretch of I-89. On Jan. 3, 2022, highway drivers spotted a young Shiloh shepherd — thought at first to be a German shepherd — running loose on Veterans Memorial Bridge on I-89 near the New Hampshire-Vermont border. New Hampshire State Police responded to reports of a wandering dog on the highway at around 10 p.m.
Trooper Sandberg and other officers of the Lebanon Police Department made attempts to corral her and get close, but she kept running away. Tinsley, a 1-year-old Shiloh Shepherd, eventually led them to a damaged section of guardrail. Police saw a badly damaged overturned F350 pickup truck with two injured occupants nearby who had been ejected from the vehicle.
The officers called for medical assistance and found the two injured men to be suffering from hypothermia. It was then that they learned that the shepherd pup belonged to one of the injured occupants of the truck, Cameron Landry. Tinsley stood by her owner as officers assisted him and the passenger.
Public relations and community outreach officer Amber Lagace said the dog never tried to run away from the officers on scene but instead led them further up the road and over the bridge.
Laundry suffered minor injuries and was later released from the hospital. The other passenger, identified as Justin Connors, suffered more serious injuries and is still in the hospital. He has undergone two surgeries but is expected to recover. Unfortunately, Connors’ dog, a bulldog, was also riding in the truck with the two men and Tinsley. Sadly, the bulldog was struck on the interstate after the crash; its body was discovered the next morning.
Lt. Dan Baldassarre, commander of Troop D of the New Hampshire State Police said the incident is a real-life Lassie story. Baldassarre said. “It’s really quite remarkable. This dog definitely saved their lives. I don’t think they would have survived the night given the temperatures.” The New Hampshire State Police posted a long message on Facebook about the incident which included pictures from the scene of Tinsley and the totaled Ford F350 truck after the rollover crash. Laundry said after the crash, “She’s my little guardian angel. It’s a miracle how she has that kind of intelligence to do what she did.” For all her bravery, Tinsley was rewarded with a lot of back scratches and goodies including a venison dinner.
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Shaquille O’Neil is known for his generosity and good deeds. O’Neal surprised a bunch of kids at an elementary school in Georgia with free PS5s, Nintendo Switch systems, and bicycles for Christmas. The basketball star revealed on a podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk that he had bought 1,000 Playstation 5s, another 1,000 Nintendo Switches, and an unspecified number of bicycles and delivered them to underprivileged school children in Georgia.
During the podcast he said “My father was a drill sergeant, my mother just was a hard-working woman. They had little, but they taught me the value of giving back. They taught me the value of helping those in need. As long as I’m on this Earth, I’m going to try to do what I can to make sure kids get good toys.” The school in question was Wesley Lakes Elementary School and the gift-giving was part of O’Neal’s Shaq-a-Claus event, which was attended by 500 children. The game systems were among other gifts given including toys, backpacks, laptops, lunches and more. “Kids gravitate to me because I am the simple gateway,” he said in a recent mini-doc about his giving tendencies. “When kids see me they are like, ‘I can relate to Shaq, he’s silly.”
It’s not the first year schools would be on the receiving end of one of Shaq’s charitable endeavors. O’Neil’s “Shaq to School” program coordinates with Amazon and Zappos to deliver school supplies every year to 5,000 children who can’t afford them. He also joined representatives from Tonka, ‘Pepsi Stronger Together’, and others to rain down gifts and cheer to schools in Las Vegas, where the Shaquille O’Neal Foundation provided toys, laptops, and lunch for even more children—as well as opening a brand-new basketball court where kids can try on Shaq’s shoes for fun.
When Shaq was in school himself, and unable to fit into most sneakers, a cobbler who specialized in large shoes gave the boy a free pair. Doug the Cobbler has since been repaid by that single loss of revenue many times, with Shaq buying over 2,000 pairs of shoes—both for himself and for donating to kids who have the same problem as he once did. He once bought a completely new, wheelchair accessible house for the family of a 12-year old boy in Atlanta who was paralyzed by stray gunfire at a violent shootout.
He also once paid off the balance of an engagement ring after hearing about the buyer still being weeks away from paying it off. Shaq put the balance on his credit card, saying “I’m just trying to make people smile.” While O’Neal stresses the importance of giving, he once said that he doesn’t like to receive presents. “I do not accept gifts. You show me a movie where Santa receives gifts and I’ll take one.”
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The CEO of Schmidt Baking Company came to the rescue for drivers struck in the I95 backup. Thousands of drivers were gridlocked on a 50-mile stretch of road running through Virginia for over 24 hours after a winter storm dropped around a foot of snow on Virginia and other eastern states. The CEO ordered one of his drivers also stuck to pass bread and rolls out to the stranded cars.
A Maryland couple, Casey Holihan and John Noe, had not moved for more than 20 hours in the southbound lane of I-95 thanks to a combination of jack-knifed tractor trailers, heavy snowfall and four inches of ice that hindered rescue vehicles from clearing the road. Like many others, they had spent the night in their car in temperatures that had dipped into the 20s. After not having eaten in over 30 hours, they noticed the bread truck from Schmidt Baking Company stuck just ahead of them.
Not thinking it would work, they called the company’s customer service line and left a message asking if it was possible for the driver to open the truck and give some loaves of bread to them and others. Holihan received a phone call 20 minutes later from the owner of Baltimore-based H&S Bakery, which owns Schmidt Baking Company. Chuck Paterakis told her he was instructing the truck’s driver, Ron Hill, to open up the back and pass out some food.
The couple said they helped pass out about 300 packages of rolls and loaves of bread to people in surrounding vehicles over the course of an hour. Holihan said “We just kept giving it out until we couldn’t walk anymore because it was so freezing. It felt incredible just hearing people say thank you and hearing people just so relieved to finally have food in their car, food in their system and in their kids’ system. It was a really incredible feeling.”
Chuck Paterakis said “It was an easy decision. I’m so pleased that the people who were hungry, that hadn’t eaten for the past 24 hours, had a chance, even if it was bread, had the chance to fill their stomachs up. It was very gratifying to me. It was something I will always remember. I’m very humbled and grateful that we could help.”
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