A group of high school football players in Georgia are being recognized for helping get a woman out of her wrecked car. The six students ran to the aid of a woman trapped in her car minutes after an accident near the school. As the vehicle began to smoke, they worked together to pry her bad mangled door open to get her out.
The Rome High School football players were identified as Cesar Parker, Treyvon Adams, Antwiion Carey, Messiah Daniels, Tyson Brown and Alto Moore. As soon as they saw the wrecked car they leapt into action. “We just ran as fast as we could to the lady and check on her to see if she was alright. We saw she was in pain, she was screaming and asking us to help her. We used all our muscles,we’re pretty big people, we’re strong. We play football, so we lift weights a lot, but the door was just extremely bent and broke.” Adams said.
It all happened in about a minute, once the woman was freed the teens checked on the other driver involved in the accident and carried on their way back to class. The 50 year old woman was transported to a local hospital with minor injuries. Their heroic actions were witnessed by staff at the school and they have been recognized by both the Rome City Schools and the Rome Police Department.
Ninth grade teacher Luis Goya witnessed the incident and praised them in a social media post that included a picture of them while they pulled the door open. “This morning I witnessed something amazing that our Rome High Football players did. While I was in front of the school during my morning duty, I heard a loud noise at the intersection that appeared to be a wreck. While I was running to the intersection, I noticed that two cars were involved. There was a 50 year old lady trapped in her car and couldn’t get out. Smoke started to come out of the car, and fluid started to spill everywhere in the intersection. The door was jammed and in terrible shape. While I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, the football players who witnessed the wreck, ran to the car and started helping the lady. They literally started using their strength to pry the door open, so the lady could be released. After a few seconds of pulling and pushing the door, the boys ended up opening it and helped her get out of the car. She was shaking and still in panic, but our RHS boys gave her comfort and were able to help her. The Rome High School football players really showed up today. They went above and beyond to help this lady without hesitation” Goya said.
Adams admitted that the team has been getting a lot of love and recognition for their act, which teachers said they deserved, and the school has helped drive. In true hero fashion, the teens say while the recognition was nice, it was something anyone would do.
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A New York City Uber driver is being hailed as a hero after he stopped mid-ride to rush into a burning brownstone to help rescue people before firefighters arrived. Fritz Sam, 54, was taking a passenger to LaGuardia Airport when he noticed a commotion on the street in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. He saw flames and dark smoke coming out of a second floor window of a brownstone.
Sam said he asked his passenger “Can I pull over? Maybe we can help.” They got out and joined a group of bystanders who were yelling for people to get out of the residence. When he asked if everyone was out of the building, someone said they thought at least one person remained inside. “At that moment, I was like, ‘You have to decide, you know, what are you going to do?'” Sam said. “I just knew that something had to be done at that moment. So I just took my phone, ran inside and around the staircase.”
Sam said that inside the building, he first found a man who said he had to retrieve something from another floor. Elsewhere, he found a woman who was hesitant about leaving the building. Sam was able to convince the woman to leave and walked out by her side. Once she was safely on the sidewalk, he went back into the building to find the man who he had encountered earlier. As he was leaving with the man, Sam said he ran into a police officer and a firefighter with a hose, who both ran into the building.
Sam’s passenger, Jemimah Wei, said that after firefighters arrived on the scene, they agreed the people would be safe and they could continue on their ride to the airport. “We got back into the Uber, and Sam was like, ‘Do I smell like smoke?'” Wei said. “I was like, ‘Dude, seriously? It’s fine, you just saved a life.'” Wei tweeted about the heroic experience and said she still caught her flight despite the unexpected detour.
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California has become the first state to implement a statewide Universal Meals Program for all public school children. The Universal Meals program will be used to reach more students with the federal National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program. The Meal Mandate is expanded to include both a nutritious breakfast and lunch for, not just needy children, but all children each school day.
The Universal Meals program is designed to build on the foundations of the federal National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). The program is powered by both state and federal funds. The California State Legislature allocates funds to provide additional state meal reimbursement to cover the cost of the Universal Meals Program. High poverty schools will be required to participate in a federal provision.
Prior to this program, students qualified for free meals under particular criteria which included aspects like their parents’ income taxes, the level of poverty in the school’s surrounding area and the zip code where the family lives. With over 327,000 students in California public schools, 60% of students qualified for free school meals.
The state recently implemented the Universal Program to address rising food insecurity. While California produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, on average one in five residents — about 8 million people — struggle with food insecurity, according to the California Association of Food Banks.
Now, with the state launching the mandatory Universal Meals Program, parents will be sure that their children can get at least two free, full meals at schools daily and not have to incur the expense for preparing breakfast and lunch for them. All students will be automatically enrolled in the program, although students will not be required to participate. Instead, meals will be served to the students who ask for them.
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A Mississippi man credits his pet cat with preventing a robbery at his home and possibly saving his life. While cats have a reputation for being aloof, this cat did everything she could to alert her owner of danger. Fred Everitt, 68, adopted the 20 pound calico from theTupelo-Lee Humane Society four years ago with the intention of saving her life; he never thought she’d return the favor. But Bandit, who is now referred to as Everitt’s guard cat, did just that.
On July 25th, sometime between 2:30 and 3 a.m. Everitt said he was first awoken by Bandit’s loud meows in the kitchen. Then, she raced into the bedroom, jumped onto the bed and began pulling the comforter off of him and clawing at his arms. Everitt said she had never done that before so he knew something was wrong. “I went, ‘What in the world is wrong with you?” Everitt said.
When he got up to investigate, he turned on the lights and saw two young men outside his back door. One had a gun, and the other was using a crowbar to try and pry the door open. Everitt said by the time he retrieved his handgun and returned to the kitchen, the would-be intruders had already fled. He said the situation could have been very different without Bandit. “It did not turn into a confrontational situation, thank goodness,” Everitt said. “But I think it’s only because of the cat. You hear of guard dogs. This is a guard cat.”
Everitt said he’s been a longtime supporter of the Tupelo-Lee Humane Society and was dropping off a donation check four years ago when he asked to see what kittens were available for adoption. Bandit came home with him that day. “I want to let people know that you not only save a life when you adopt a pet or rescue one. The tides could be turned. You never know when you save an animal if they’re going to save you” he said
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A group of cave explorers in Missouri accidentally found an elderly dog that had been missing for months. Rick Haley said he found the dog along with fellow cave explorer Gerry Keene while exploring a cave system in Perry County, Missouri. The group of spelunkers were taking part in a research project for the Cave Research Foundation. They were remapping a cave just north of Perryville, Missouri.
While they were working, Haley said another spelunker came up to him saying they had to do a dog rescue after a group of parents and children discovered the dog. Haley, 66, said the other explorers left the cave and knocked on the doors in the nearby neighborhood and actually found the owner of the lost dog. They then went back to the cave and navigated through twists and turns to reach the dog, who was about 500 feet deep into the cave.
Haley said the dog was in bad shape,having been there a long time, she was very near death, suffering from starvation and had no energy to even walk toward him and the other rescuers. They put the dog in a duffel bag with her head sticking out. This was to protect her and the rescuers as she would likely struggle. They moved her 500 feet to a very tight, awkward, vertical climb, handing her hand to hand upward to the surface. The pictures kinda tell the story.
She was happy to be out and reunited with her owner who said she had been missing since June 9th. Abby the dog was found between Brewer and Perryville in the Moore Cave system — the second longest cave system in the state at more than 22 miles long. While no one knows how the dog ended up in the cave, Haley said had it not been for the research project, the dog would have remained in the cave.
“I’m just happy to be able to get her out of the cave because when we got her out of the cave…her spirits lifted a little,” Haley said. “And I can actually say my day was very positive. When I put my head down on the pillow that night, I had a smile on my face.”
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A 7-year-old California boy is being hailed as a hero for his quick-thinking actions that helped save a toddler from the bottom of a pool. Massiah Browne was swimming with relatives at the apartment complex where he lives with his mom and brother when he said he saw something out of the ordinary and sprang into action.
Massiah said “I was just playing in the pool and then I saw a boy at the bottom of the pool and I went to get him.” Massiah said he noticed the 3-year-old boy, a stranger, with his mouth and eyes open and dove down to get him, grabbing his arm and pulling him to the pool’s surface.
Massiah, who was in the pool with a 9-year-old relative, swam down in 6-feet deep water to rescue the boy. From there, his 9-year-old relative, a girl named Savannah, pulled the boy onto the pool deck, where adults came to help and then called 911. His mother, Tiara Delvalle, was alerted by relatives who were with her son at the pool, and rushed to the scene to help.
Bystanders performed CPR on the boy, who was breathing by the time first responders arrived. A Sacramento Fire Department spokesperson confirmed the child was breathing when the medical workers arrived, and the toddler was transported to the nearest hospital in critical condition, “with advanced life support efforts provided by Sacramento firefighters.” The toddler is expected to recover.
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A 12 year old boy in Auburn, Maine opened a farmstand in hopes of taking over the family farm one day. Brayden Nadeau said he’s been farming his whole life and now he essentially runs the family farm himself and has opened a farm stand to help feed his community. Nadeau started his first farmstand two years ago and earned enough money to buy a new one.
He sells homemade zucchini bread and zucchini relish made by his family and other community members with vegetables straight from his garden. He also raises livestock and turkeys for meat, chickens for meat and eggs, and pigs for meat and breeding. Nadeau works 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the summer. During the school year, he picks vegetables in the morning and sets up the farm stand before heading to school.
Nadeau says he always wanted to be behind the wheel of a tractor. “I’ve been farming my whole life. As long as I could remember, I’ve been on his lap, steering the tractor, running the bucket,” Nadeau said, pointing to his grandfather, Dan Herrick. Herrick always had a farm at his home but until now, it didn’t serve as more than just a way to feed his family.
Herrick said “There ought to be more 12-year-olds like him. The farmstand teaches him business, it teaches him how to work, it teaches him to stay out of trouble, it teaches him where food comes from, and it teaches him that without farmers, there’s no food.” Nadeau said he’s learning a lot more out in the fields than he would have sitting in front of a TV playing video games.
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Theresa Roden competed in her first triathlon in 2005 and was impressed by what she learned about herself during training and racing. She thought the insight she gained was something that would have benefited her when she was growing up. She believes she would have been a different, more confident woman.
Inspired by her experience, she decided to bring the benefits of visualization, affirmations, nutrition and the active lifestyle that the sport of triathlon gave her, to girls 11-14 years old, who could really benefit from it. With a degree in education and a commitment to her dream, Roden launched i-tri in 2010.
She’s been training girls, free of charge, to compete in youth triathlons through her program, I-TRI. She works with students from 12 schools around Sag Harbor, New York. The 11 to 14-year-old girls swim 300 yards, bike seven miles and run one and a half miles in their races. While it might seem daunting, triathlons teach the girls confidence and the feeling of satisfaction that comes with accomplishing tough tasks.
Roden says the girls are so open to learning and the program empowers them and teaches them that they can do anything they set their mind to. Some of the girls are hesitant but all have said once they were involved they realized they were learning to push their own limits and the program has created a camaraderie among the girls.
In addition to the physical training, I-TRI hosts special “empowerment sessions” once a week for each school group. “We do lessons on things like affirmations and visualization and how to appreciate yourself and love yourself,” Roden said. “We do a lesson on real beauty where we hand out geodes and they get to see that beauty is from the inside out. And what matters most is that part of you that nobody can see … the love that you bring into the world.”
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A community in New York has adopted a senior pit bull with a grim prognosis. Lloyd, a 12-year-old pit bull, was brought to the Niagara SPCA after police found him wandering the streets. Lloyd has a cancerous tumor and is in end stage kidney failure but despite these ailments, he has a love of life and people that Amy Lewis, the director of the shelter admired.
So, Lewis decided Lloyd should live out his last days — which could be anywhere from three weeks to three months — with a bucket list. She posted about it on the SPCA’s Facebook page and community members have been jumping at the opportunity to get Lloyd out of the shelter so he can just be a dog.
For the last two weeks, Lloyd has been treated to a barrage of bucket list items, including eating at Lloyd’s Tacos in Buffalo, hanging out with penguins at the Aquarium at Niagara, visiting Lilly Dale and taking in Jaguar Land Rover Buffalo. He’s also visited local parks, beaches and pools. The Lockport Fire Department even swore Lloyd in as an honorary firefighter.
According to Lewis, Lloyd is completely booked up through August. “I’m super grateful to our community for showing Lloyd so much love. “We want to make whatever time he has left amazing” Lewis said. Lewis said that because of how many people are trying to make a difference in Lloyd’s life, the Niagara SPCA is thinking about making it permanent. “We anticipate that this will be a pilot for a program where the public gets to do this with many of our shelter animals,” Lewis said.
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A 90-year-old owner of multiple McDonald’s franchises did an extraordinary good deed for his employees, who were at risk of losing their livelihoods. Tony Philiou, needed to shut down the Mayfield Heights, OH location for renovations in March. His employees, however, had nothing to worry about.
Philiou had a meeting with his employees where he told them his plans to close, remodel and build the brand-new store. “As I’ve been in their shoes, I could sense their concern,” he said. “You’re going to sit home. You’re going to get paid,” said Philiou, recalling his words in the speech he delivered to workers. He said that he knew about a month before he closed for renovations that he would make the move to keep his workers’ jobs — and their wallets — safe under his umbrella.
Philiou flipped his first burger as an employee at this exact location 60 years ago; now he’s the boss who chose to continue paying all 90 employees, even though they would not be able to work for him during renovations.
He said of the decision “”I have people here that make a living here and go from week-to-week pay. How can I tolerate for them to not have a paycheck? “That was the thing to do.” Over his 60 years in the business he’s helped four employees become franchise owners, and some managers and employees have been around for decades.
Philiou says he values hard work and this has been the hardest time to retain employees but if you do the right thing, word gets out, and people stick around. The new building with the same old values of hard work and respect, reopened with a ribbon cutting ceremony on July 6th.
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