A British mother is channeling her grief in an effort to save other families from the devastating loss she’s experienced. Jamie Rees, 18, was at a friend’s house when he collapsed in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Though his friends performed CPR, he did not get enough oxygen before paramedics arrived and he died in hospital on January 5.
Through numerous fundraising efforts, his mom Naomi Rees-Issitt is getting 20 defibrillators installed across her son’s hometown of Rugby. The 43 year old mother of two said there are defibs out there but unfortunately for her son, the nearest kit was locked away in a school.
“You can’t pre-plan your cardiac arrest. Defibrillators that are locked in buildings are pretty pointless. The ambulance pulled up to Jamie’s side in 19.5 minutes,” Naomi explained. “If you reach a person in cardiac arrest in seven minutes the chances of getting his heart beating again is 70%.”
Within weeks of losing her son, she enlisted friends and family to raise enough money to equip Jamie’s hometown of Rugby with defibrillators. Through Jamie’s JustGiving campaign, they initially intended to raise enough money to have one defibrillator installed outside her son’s school but thanks to the overwhelming local support, that plan quickly turned into 20 kits at various locations in town.
They will be installing the 20 defibrillators by January 5, 2023—the one year anniversary of her son’s passing. Naomi said they can’t thank the community enough and the support has been amazing. “We know Jamie is out there. He’s meant to be saving lives” she said.
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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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An 18 year old lifeguard is being hailed a hero after delivering a baby on a pool deck. Natalie Lucas, who’s been a lifeguard for 3 years, was working her morning shift at the YMCA of Northern Colorado when a woman’s water broke. Tessa Rider was nine months pregnant with her third child and a few days past her due date. Rider and her husband, Matthew Jones, were visiting their local Y — about five minutes from their home in Longmont, Colo. — for a swim on July 24.
The couple said they knew the baby was coming but didn’t know if it was going to be a week, two weeks, or today. Rider slipped into the pool at around 10:45 a.m. and said she felt a sense of complete relaxation but the 30 seconds of calm swiftly shifted to chaos. She said she suddenly felt the need to push. She instructed her husband who was scrolling casually on his phone on the pool deck to grab their things and meet at the car. That plan quickly went awry when she took two steps out of the pool and collapsed onto all fours with her water breaking as she hit the ground.
Within seconds, she felt a sensation that the baby was coming out. Lucas — who was the sole lifeguard on duty at the time — sprinted over and saw Jones rubbing his wife’s back while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. Jones told the teen “We’re having a baby,” and before he could give the 911 operator any details, he saw the baby crowning. Lucas said her adrenaline kicked in and she immediately grabbed towels and an emergency first-aid kit. She used a walkie talkie to alert other staff of the situation and asked a man who was swimming laps to call an ambulance. Rider, still on all fours, screamed and pushed as bystanders watched in disbelief. Lucas supported her head as Jones guided the baby out.
Lucas then sat back to back with Jones as she held her seconds-old son, Tobin “Toby” Thomas Rider. An ambulance arrived shortly after and paramedics gave baby Toby a clean bill of health.
The couple said Lucas was quick-thinking and calm, intuiting what they needed in real time.
“I would not have traded Natalie for anybody in that situation,” Jones said. “I’m just so thankful that she was a part of that, and that she supported us the way that she did. She really played her part perfectly, and was so sweet to us. I really, really appreciated her being there, and I’m glad she had that experience with us.”
Lucas said the experience was profoundly fulfilling and pointed out the irony is as a lifeguard, “you’re trained for death rather than life, so it was a very eye-opening experience.” In this case, rather than preventing death, she was helping to welcome new life. During her training and certification, Lucas learned how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first aid and water rescues. Helping someone give birth was certainly not a part of the curriculum.
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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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Big Dog Ranch Rescue, a 100-acre cage-free no-kill rescue group has announced it will open a location in Alabama. The new site will sit on the former home of a greyhound training facility in Macon County and will serve as a rescue, rehabilitation and adoption center for neglected and abused dogs across the south. The facility is set to open its first buildings in September.
The Macon County location will be named “Big Dog Ranch Rescue, Alabama” and will serve as the sister site to the Palm Beach County, Florida location. The facility has 16 kennels and several other structures that will be renovated before its grand opening. They said the rising costs of everything from fuel to food make the opening of the facility in Alabama even more critical.
The group said in a release “Many shelters are severely overcrowded, resulting in a record euthanasia rate for these former family pets. This new campus will allow Big Dog Ranch Rescue to double its impact by eventually saving 10,000 dogs each year. The expansion will allow us to double our impact in saving last-day dogs from euthanasia by increasing our capacity to a facility where our rescue efforts are desperately needed.”
Big Dog Ranch Rescue was founded in 2008 and has more than 50,000 dogs. Their goal is to save 5,000 dogs every year and place them with loving families. They also educate people about the proper care for dogs and the importance of spaying and neutering. The non profit rescues dogs from natural disasters and high-kill shelters as well as takes in owner surrenders and strays. They rehabilitate the dogs and find them loving homes.
They have several programs to match owners including matching dogs for seniors and veterans. They rescue dogs in any condition, then every dog receives a full medical exam, is spayed/neutered, and microchipped. From there, they live out their days playing in ½ acre sections until homes are found. With the new facility opening, they are hoping to expand medical services to be available to all adopters for the lifelong care of their dog. Big Dog Ranch Rescue Founder and CEO Lauree Simmons said “Together, we can make a difference in ending dog homelessness and saving more lives with the help of Shorter, Alabama’s resourceful community.”
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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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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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