The Most Amazing Hero Stories You Never Heard About

“Meg has this impressive outdoor resume. A very prolific climber in the Wasatch, and a very committed outdoors person,” Fiducia said about her fallen partner.

Many of the young women that O’Neill taught shared touching stories about how she impacted their lives.

“I remember feeling like a deer in the headlights my first months in Yosemite,” wrote former student Robin Clancy.

“But on my first day, I met this bubbly, friendly, funny, and tack-smart lady named Meg O’Neill who introduced herself as my coach. She taught me so much in those first few months.”

“She took me on my first real outdoor rock climb. She taught me the basics of crack climbing,” Clancy shared. “She introduced me to the mountains in such a kind, non-judgmental way that they quickly began to feel like home.”

“There are absolutely no words that can begin to properly express the outsize impact Meg had on each of us and the community,” wrote friend David Taft.

“Ever since I met her in 2013 while living in the San Juans, Meg has been a pillar of consistency in my life,” he posted. “Some years we only caught up at Creeksgiving, other years we’d climb together most weekends and her guest room would feel like a second home.”

The Duchesne County Sheriff’s Office were finally able to locate and recover O’Neill’s body on Monday night, after 36 hours of searching.

“If all of us can be one-eighth what Meg’s attitude of service were, what a change that could be in our local community,” Fiducia remarked.

Pizza Delivery Guy Stops Car Thieves, Saves Pie

A Cocco’s pizza delivery man managed to stop a crime and serve up a hot pie without breaking a sweat.

Tyler Morrell found himself smack in the middle of a car chase as he was delivering a pizza in Aston, Pennsylvania on Sunday.

The Cocco’s Pizza driver witnessed the tail end of a high-speed chase as he was about to hand off his delivery, but instead watched on in astonishment when a stolen car was driven onto a lawn across the street.

“The car just came up and beached doing like 75, he beached on the side of this person’s lawn and almost took out a couple of cars,” Morrell told WPVI-TV.

The suspected car thief sideswiped a telephone pole, visibly shaking it, then slowly drove across several lawns.

The woman Morrell was about to had the pizza to screamed that there was a high speed chase and ran back inside, but the Cocco’s Pizza driver moved closer to see the action.

Two squad cars caught up to the 17-year-old driver, who decided to flee on foot. Morrell, who was standing near the sidewalk watching, used his foot to put an end his escape.

“I started walking towards the road, but I couldn’t do anything with my hands because I’m holding the pizza, so I just stuck my leg out,” he explained.

The carjacker tripped over his well placed leg and went flying onto the person who ordered the Cocco’s pizza’s front lawn.

The suspect skidded a few feet before getting back to his feet, but it was just enough time for the pursuing officer to grab the young criminal.

Brookhaven Chief of Police Michael Vice told reporters that Morrell’s foot was crucial to stopping the crime.

“He gave us the help we needed, by tripping him it gave us the time to catch up with the gentleman,” he said.

“I’m pretty sick of seeing crime like that go on, especially half a mile down the road,” said Morrell. “So I was just ready to step up if they needed a hand I was there, or a foot.”

Both the 17-year-old driver, and 19-year-old passenger were arrested on Sunday afternoon. The pizza was delivered to its intended recipient wholly intact.

“In this case, this guy ultimately saved the day, and from what I hear the pizza was saved as well,” Vice remarked.

“I did as much as I could to prevent the cheese from sliding,” Morrell told Fox 29.

Brookhaven Police even offered him a job for his efforts. “Thank you sir for the assist!!! If you’re interested in a job we are always looking for good people,” the department wrote on Facebook.

Morrell set up a GoFundMe to give the local community, who had been inundating Cocco’s Pizza with calls about the incident, an “opportunity” to send him a tip.

He initially only set up a $100 goal, but has since raised more than $4,500. He’ll use the proceeds towards start up costs for his restaurant concept Morrell Cheesesteak Company, rather than applying to the police force.

Teenage Athlete Saves Elderly Man And Dog From Submerged Vehicle

A 17-year-old high school triple-threat athlete saved an an 83-year-old man and his dog from a Jeep that had plunged into the frigid water of a lake in Iowa.

Joe Salmon, a high school athlete, was ice fishing with his mother at East Okoboji Lake, when he witnessed a grey Jeep Wrangler drive onto thin ice and submerge.

The driver, 83-year-old Thomas Lee, was heading to his son-in-law’s fishing shack, but made the mistake of driving across the lake under the bridge, as ice formation under structures tends to be thinner due to heat absorption.

Salmon was watching a snowmobile race when the Jeep broke through the ice, and rushed over while he was on the phone with 911 and calling for others nearby to aid him.

The teen football player, wrestler, and track star stripped off his fishing gear and signaled for Lee to get out of the Jeep, but he was unable to get out of the locked doors and closed windows.

“I took one step and (the water) went to about my chest,” he said to the Des Moines Register.

“I got on the bumper of the rear and tried opening the back door, but all the windows were locked, but one guy gave me a knife and I hit the back glass a couple of times.”

He climbed up on the car’s back bumper and managed to break into the back window with the utility knife provided by one of the four other men that stood at the ice’s edge to help Lee.

Salmon shimmied in through the back window and emerged with Lee’s golden doodle, Cooper. He tossed the dog towards the waiting men, who pulled the pup to safety after he briefly hit the water.

“I didn’t really think about why or anything,” Salmon told The Washington Post. 

“I wanted to make sure he was going to be okay — to get him out. A full-size car going there, I knew it wasn’t going to end well.”

Salmon entered the Jeep again and climbed up to the front seat, where he had to free Lee’s foot from between a seat and the center console.

As the water level rose swiftly and Lee became stuck again, the quick thinking teenager folded down the seats and dragged him to the back, where another man was waiting in the water to pull him out.

Lee was yanked out of the water by the bystanders, while Salmon climbed to the top of the car to leapt back to safety himself.

After Lee was out of the water, he and the other men were guided to a nearby store, where they were able to dry off and get warm.

Lee was transported to a local hospital, but neither he or Cooper sustained any injuries from the incident. The same can not be said for the Jeep, which was pulled out of the lake the next day.

“I’m happy that he was OK and the dog was OK,” Salmon said about the ordeal. “It was just crazy at the time.”

Navy Vet Runs Half Marathons With Wheelchair-Bound Daughter

A Navy veteran has just completed ten half marathons with his disabled daughter in tow.

Gaby Ridgeway, 24, was born with Oculocerebrocutaneous syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes intellectual disabilities, seizures, and difficulty regulating brain and bodily functions.

Though she can stand for a limited amount of time, Gaby is unable to walk on her own, and is mostly confined to a wheelchair, due to also suffering from cerebral palsy and scoliosis.

When James Ridgeway returned home to Visalia, California after a deployment in 2019, he began going on regular runs with his son, and soon discovered that Gaby was upset that she didn’t get to go with.

Though she is nonverbal and is unable to string sentences together, Gaby can express herself in single words, and definitely was able to convey her emotions about being left out.

“We would come home from a run and she would be visibly irritated and we asked her, ‘Are you mad?'” Ridgeway told PEOPLE.

When his daughter replied in the affirmative, he discovered that she didn’t like that her father and brother went running without her.

“So I asked her, ‘Do you want to run with us?’ and she’s like, ‘Yeah!’ I was like, “Oh, wow. How do I do that?'” He continued.

With the help of his wife Lorena, and racing organization Ainsley’s Angels, which assists in transforming endurance events into inclusive activities for all, James was able to get Gaby a running wheelchair.

Ainsley’s Angels was founded by fellow military veteran, Major Kim Rossiter, a retired US Marine.

He launched the organization after his daughter Ainsley was diagnosed with Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy, a terminal illness that causes global paralysis and eventually took her life in 2016.

Rossiter initially began running with Ainsley as a therapeutic means to deal with her tragic diagnosis, but ended up forming a national organization that has granted over 1,300 racing wheelchairs to athletes and riders across the country.

Gaby became an Angel Rider and began joining her father and brother on local runs. Shortly after, James formed “Team Ridgeway,” so they could compete in racing events together.

“I’ve always wanted to do a half marathon and we were just testing the limits of how long she could [participate and] really enjoy it,” he said.

They began running in half marathons in 2019, which he said Gaby “loves,” and have since completed ten of them across multiple states.

James trains for the competitions year-round, and even runs with Gaby’s empty wheelchair during the winter months, when it’s too cold for her to ride along.

“I try to do most of the training with [Gaby’s ride] because that’s going to make it easier. If I train by myself, it’s too easy to go faster, so I can’t judge how my progress is,” he remarked.

Their next scheduled event is Rock ‘N’ Roll Salt Lake City in August, and this time they’re running for a cause.

Gaby likes to look at babies on her tablet, and discovered St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital during her daily scrolling.

“I know she has a connection with that, so I asked her, ‘Do you want to do it with St. Jude’s for the babies?’ She said, ‘Yeah,'” James commented. “It’s all for her.”

Landlord Takes Over Legal Guardianship For 93-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor And Tenant

A property manager took over care for a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor after buying an apartment building in upstate New York.

Everyday hero Brock Cvijanovich bought a residential apartment building through the property management firm he owns, and it came with an unexpected clause.

Cvijanovich was sold the building on the condition that he take care of 93-year-old resident Alice Schuman.

Originally, Cvijanovich had been outbid by another buyer, but the former owner offered to knock $50,000 off the price if he agreed to escort Schuman around town on her errands.

Schuman had lived in the building for sixty years, and the original owner had been helping her out for years, but was ready to retire himself.

In addition to taking her out to get groceries and other essentials, he had also been giving her a steep discount on rent for decades.

While Schuman had only been paying $200 a month, other tenants paid ten times as much on average, a kindness that Cvijanovich continued to extend when he took over ownership.

For months, she would knock on his door with her rent check on the first of the month, and the duo would travel to stores around the city.

Over the course of their arrangement, Cvijanovich learned that Schuman had lost her entire family in Nazi concentration camps, and came to the United States after she had survived the Holocaust.

“She literally had nobody else,” he told Fox News Digital. “That was a lot of the reason that it went the way that it did.”

One day Schuman didn’t show up at Cvijanovich’s doorstep during their regularly scheduled outing, and he instead went by her apartment.

He heard faint calls for help when he arrived, and kicked down the door to find that she was incapacitated.

After she was admitted to the hospital, doctors decided that she was unable to care for herself and needed to be put into the state’s care.

With the support of his nurse mother, Cvijanovich became Schuman’s legal guardian, and visited her in the hospital daily for her entire nine-month stay.

She was eventually well enough to be transferred to a nursing facility, but died of pneumonia in January with Cvijanovich and his mother by her side.

Another everyday hero helped out a homeless man this month, when she hired him to work on his farm after saw him panhandling on the street.

Ontario, Canada native Danielle MacDuff struck up a conversation with Brian Bannister, 60, while he was struggling to make ends meet by collecting change, and offered him a job after only a 25-minute talk.

After losing two wives and overcoming a drug addiction, Bannister was living in an unheated shed with no work prospects.

A day after meeting MacDuff, he became a full-time carer to her 200 animals, who he helps maintain on her farm for whatever money she can spare.

“He’s so kind, compassionate, he’s amazing with my children, my animals,” MacDuff told CTV News. “And his willingness to help me on the farm is very, very much appreciated.”

She bought him a phone and took him to get his first haircut for years, then enlisted the local community to raise money for new clothes and temporary shelter.

A GoFundMe page MacDuff set up to benefit Bannister has raised more than $10,000 to go towards a permanent place to live.

Couple Rescue Father And Daughter From Drowning

A woman and her fiancé were instrumental in saving the lives of a father-daughter duo who had been reported missing after enjoying a day out on a lake near Tampa.

Samantha Conover and her fiancé had just eaten dinner on the water with their friends, and were headed back to shore.

When they reached the public boat ramp at 8:00p.m. on April 15^th, they heard that 31-year-old Christopher Snow and his 13-year-old daughter Alexis Snow had never come back from their time jetskiing.

Snow’s girlfriend had alerted authorities when they didn’t return home, and neither were answering their phones.

Conover had seen the pair earlier out on the water, she feared the worst after hearing they were missing.

“I didn’t know what to think, I was scared,” she remarked about the situation.

A Sheriff’s deputy was at the boat launch asking others to help him search for the Snow’s, and Conover and her fiancé invited the deputy to board their boat.

They set off on search of the large lake’s perimeter and eventually heard someone screaming for help.

The impromptu rescue team fished the cold and tired Snow’s out of the water, and were tearfully informed by Alexis that they had been treading water for an hour after their personal watercraft had sunk.

Though they were wearing lifejackets, John’s was dangerously undersized and did little to keep him buoyant. He was exhausted when they pulled him onto the pontoon boat.

“We’re not heroes,” Conover said about the rescue. “We were at the right place at the right time. We would have done it for anyone without hesitation.”

“I never thought we be in that situation,” she continued. “I’m glad that… We were able to save them.”

The happy turn of events could have turned out much differently, as they did 16-year-old Bryce Brooks.

The Atlanta teenager was on vacation with his family in Pensacola, Florida, when he saw four young children being pulled out into the sea by a current.

The area was unmanned by lifeguards and yellow caution flags were flying, which indicated moderate currents, but the children ignored the warning signs.

Brooks and two other teens didn’t hesitate to jump in the water to save them. Unfortunately, the heroic teenager was swept away by the rough waters and drowned.

A family friend, Charles Johnson II, tried to save Brooks, but drowned as well. The four children survived the ordeal because of their intervention.

“Bryce is a hero. He literally saved the lives of four kids at the expense of his own,” his father commented.

Storm Chaser Rescues Mississippi Family And Pledges To Build Them A New House

A storm chaser rescued a family who lost their home to the devastating tornadoes that blew through Mississippi on Friday, now he plans to build them a new one.

Jonny Gabel, 35, a Chicago carpenter who has been moonlighting as a storm chaser for the past five years, was tracking the powerful EF-4 that rampaged the Mississippi Delta area.

The twister was reportedly 4,000 feet wide, and churned through 59 miles of land at wind speeds of 170 MPH for the 70 minutes it was on the ground.

When Gabel and his team found out that rural Rolling Fork had been decimated by the storm, they abandoned their chase in an effort to help locate survivors.

Gabel told PEOPLE that when his team arrived the path of the tornado’s destruction was a “really eerie scene” of downed power lines and trees, where houses used to stand.

He heard someone yelling for help and rushed to the shell of a nearby home to find an elderly woman, who was uninjured and still in her bed, despite the home’s missing roof and downed walls.

“She was very calm, very collected. She wasn’t upset or wasn’t panicking,” he noted about the woman. “I think she was in shock.”

When they found the rest of the house’s inhabitants, including a child, and they were also miraculously “unscathed” by the storm that decimated a Dollar General store that was a 100 yards away.

Gabel said the “real heartbreak” was at the Dollar General, where they pulled people out of the wreckage that were both alive in dead.

A total of 26 people died in the unprecedented 27 tornadoes that ripped through five Southern states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, on Friday.

On early Sunday morning, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Mississippi, which deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency and made federal funding available to the area that is classified as one of the nation’s poorest.

“In disasters like this, there are no strangers: everyone comes together, everyone is a neighbor, everyone is family,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday.

“They cannot do it alone, and the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA will be here as long as it takes. The entire federal family is here to support these communities.”

Gabel, who is a career carpenter, isn’t relying on the government to help the family he rescued on Friday.

He offered them his construction services for free and has set up a GoFundMe page to cover the cost of building supplies.

“I want to build them a new house. I’ve been building houses my whole life, and this is my calling. This is how I can make an even bigger difference in this world,” Gabel remarked.

Hero Hawaiian Surfer Fights Off Shark After Attack That Took His Foot

A Hawaiian surfer is just happy to be alive after an eight-foot tiger shark latched onto his leg on Sunday.

Mike Morita, 58, was catching waves in the Kewalo Basin off the coast of Honolulu after attending church services on Easter morning, when he felt the animal clamp onto his leg.

“It wasn’t really like a chomp. It was just pressure,” he told local news outlet KHON 2. “I can feel the strength of it and right away I knew it was a shark.”

Morita said that he immediately began swearing and pummeling the shark, which caught the attention of his surfer friends who were nearby, before he was pulled underwater.

With the tiger shark at a clear advantage, it shook him back and forth, before Morita was able to wrap his arms and legs around the predator in a bear hug.

“I wrapped my arm around it and my body around it. And at that point I was trying to go for the eyes but my hand ended up by the gills. So as soon as I touched by the gills it let go,” he recalled.

Despite the danger of another attack, other surfers rushed to his aid and got him onto a surfboard.

“The water was red – with my blood. They said when they reached me, the shark was still on me, so they were scared for their lives too but when it finally let go, they were there for me,” Morita detailed. “They were in shock also.”

They tourniqueted his right leg, which he said was only bone from knee to ankle, and paddled him to shore.

Paramedics said that tying of the bleeding limb was what saved his life. Doctors at the local hospital he was treated at were forced to amputate Morita’s right foot, but say he’ll be able to surf again one day with the help of a prosthetic.

“The doctors are telling me that it’s up to me whether what I’m going to do. Yes I’d like to surf again but if I never surf again I’m still happy, I’ll be alright,” he remarked.

Morita’s just “grateful to be alive” and thankful for the friends and medical staff that kept him from passing.

“It’s a close community we got out there and we always look out for each other. And sure enough, when I needed it, they came together and they came to me and they saved my life,” he commented.

“I’m so thankful to be alive,” Morita concluded. “That’s my message, thank you and I appreciate the love.”

Moriata wasn’t the only one to have a terrifyingly close encounter with a shark this week.

Carmen Canovas Cervello, 30, was snorkeling in the Maldives this week, when eight-foot-long nurse shark chomped onto her shoulder and upper back.

Unlike the tiger shark, the nippy nurse shark took a bite and fled. Cervello and her diving partner jumped out of the water to see that the animal had left bite marks six inches in diameter.

Astonishingly, she determined that the wound didn’t require medical attention and after tending to it herself, jumped back in the bay.

“After the shark bite, we thought nothing major about it as it was only a minor injury so we cleaned the wound and continued snorkeling at the same spot again,” Cervello said.

Mom Performs Life Saving CPR On Daughter At Cheerleading Competition

A cheer mom saved her teenage daughter after a previously undiagnosed condition caused her to flatline during a cheerleading competition.

A North Carolina high school senior was getting ready to perform in a cheerleading competition in early March, when she had a medical emergency during a stunt.

Keianna Joe doesn’t have any memories from the day, but her teammates knew something was wrong when she was dismounting from a lift.

“I gripped onto my base and I didn’t let her go and that’s when they knew something was wrong and they slowly let me down to the ground,” Keianna said.

Her mother, Andrea Joe, a medical assistant, who was there for the performance ran to her fallen child and immediately felt for a pulse, but didn’t feel one.

“I am CPR-certified,” she told Good Morning America. “I’ve been trained on an AED device and I knew kind of at that moment that she needs this. This this has to be done and I know how to do it.”

“I just took over. I know CPR, I know how to do this. This is my baby and I have to save her,” Andrea said.

“I was like, ‘Come on, Keianna Come on. We’re not doing this. We’re not doing this today.’”

The gym was equipped with an AED, an automated external defibrillator, which Andrea was trained on, but had never used on a person before.

“I grabbed the pads and I just kind of ripped her uniform up over her head and threw the pads on her and hit the button,” she recalled.

“It said, ‘shock advised,’ and that was alarming because you train on these devices all the time and every time you train on them, they never deliver a shock because it’s not a live patient.”

When Keianna did not immediately respond, Andrea performed more CPR, which managed to revive her.

She was transported to Duke University Hospital, where doctors discovered she had gone into cardiac arrest.

A week later, she had surgery to implant a cardioverter defibrillator in her chest to automatically jumpstart her heart if it stops again.

Her team of doctors credit’s Andrea to saving her life by keeping oxygen to her brain with CPR.

“She’s probably alive because there was an AED on-site and her mom knew how to use it,” her cardiologist said.

“This is my healthy 17-year-old kid and it happened so fast,” Andrea remarked about the incident.

“One second she was up in the air, doing motions, smiling, laughing, and the next second she was unresponsive…. There were no signs, nothing.”

“You have to have the quick response and the knowledge to be able to respond to something that quickly, to be able to be of assistance,” she concluded.

A Florida family found out how true Andrea’s statement was, when their two-year-old drowned in the family pool at the beginning of this week.

The little girl was found floating face-down in an above-the-ground pool by a family member who was babysitting several of her siblings at the time.

When the family member called 911, a dispatcher dispensed life-saving CPR instructions that allowed them to keep the child alive until first responders were able to take over upon arrival.

The Volusia County Fire Rescue crew was able to resuscitate the child on the scene, where she remains in serious condition at a local hospital.

A Woman Reported Missing For Two Days Was Found Alive In A Jeep Submerged In A Lake

A Texas woman who had been reported as missing to local law enforcement for 48 hours was found alive in a Jeep submerged in a lake.

Two fisherman were out on Lake o’ the Pines in their boat early Friday morning, when they noticed a black Jeep Wrangler mostly submerged in the water.

One of the men called the Marion County Sheriff’s Office to report that the roof of the vehicle was barely above the water, just forty feet out from the boat launching ramp.

The Sheriff’s station dispatched officers to oversee a wrecking service tow the Jeep out of the lake, but as the car was about to be hooked up, they noticed movement inside.

With the help of the fishermen, the towing service and deputies were able to pull an unnamed woman out of the submerged SUV.

When first responders got her to shore, they determined that she had been reported missing to the Longview Police Department two days prior.

She was treated on scene by emergency medical services and transported to a local hospital.

“We do not know how long the Jeep was in the water,” Capt. Chuck Rogers told NPR.

Police have not released any further information on the woman’s health condition or details behind her disappearance, but the believe that she rolled into the lake on accident.

California Lifeguard Rescues Pup Swept Out To Sea

A California lifeguard rescued a daring pooch that went for an ill advised swim in the Pacific Ocean.

Long Beach Lifeguards were alerted to a “small white lap dog” running loose on at the popular Junipero Beach lot on Sunday at 6:00 p.m., during peak surfing hours.

When they arrived on scene, a toy sized dog had swam out into the sea and miraculously made it past the treacherous waves and out to the swim line.

A mustachioed Long Beach lifeguard paddled out on a rescue board and scooped the terrified pooch, who he held onto with one hand, while paddling back to shore with the other.

The Long Beach Fire Department posted the video to Facebook on Sunday night, in hopes of identifying the dog’s owner, but ultimately released the pup to the area’s Animal Control.

In a follow-up post on Tuesday, the LBFD shared the cheerful news that the pup, who is named Tofu, had been reunited with his family.

In less happy dog news, the Dowdy Ferry Animal Commission (DFAC) saved a grief-stricken German shepherd puppy who was abandoned on the side of a road in Dallas, Texas, by his owner.

The particular road is reportedly so notorious for being a spot bad animal owners dump their unwanted pets, that the DFAC has set up hidden cameras to watch for when it happens.

In a heartbreaking video, a man in a white Chevrolet SUV pulled over on the side of the road, opened his trunk hatch, and shoved the dog out onto the gravel last week.

He hopped back in and tore off, as the bewildered shepherd chased after the SUV, until he was almost hit by an oncoming car.

“That was an intentional dump and he did not want to be caught. And he did not want that dog and he made that clear,” said the DFAC’s Jeremy Boss.

“It makes me sick to my stomach when I see people that will take the time to take their dog, drive out here, and throw it out like trash like Dowdy Ferry is known for.”

Area neighbors witnessed the crime, which is considered a Class A misdemeanor, and cared for the pup, who injured his leg during the incident, until Dallas Animal Services arrived.

“My husband Wraith and I saw that video and were throwing on our clothes while the guy was dumping the dog,” remarked area resident Meagan Probus.

“We got there three minutes after he was gone, and Kema already had him on a leash.”

Probus and neighbor Kema Condor are DFAC members who routinely surveil footage from the group’s hidden cameras.

They have both rescued dozens of dogs who have been abandoned on the strip of road.

When People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) heard about the German shepherd puppy, they offered a $5,000 reward to anyone with information about the owner.

“Our dogs rely on us to protect them, but instead, this man dumped this dog on the side of the road, leaving him to chase after the car—and likely the only family he’s ever known,” PETA said in a press release.

“This is an egregious betrayal of a dog’s trust, and PETA urges anyone who recognizes this dog or the man who abandoned him to come forward immediately.”

Their efforts clearly worked, as three days later, Ramiro Zuniga, 41 was arrested and charged with Cruelty to Non-Livestock Animals, for abandoning his dog.

Dad Crushes World Record For Most Push-Ups To Inspire His Son

An Australian accountant set a new world record for most push-ups in an hour, shattering the previous record by 24 additional reps.

Brisbane native Lucas Helmke, 33 became the new Guinness World Record holder when he completed 3,206 press-ups in a single hour.

He said that his reason for taking on the challenge was to “provide inspiration” for his one-year-old son, in an effort to “show him nothing is impossible.”

Helmke averaged 53 reps a minute, to become the fourth world record holder in the last three years.

The previous record was held by fellow Australian Daniel Scali, who managed to complete 3,182 push-ups in April 2022.

Prior to Scali, Australian gym buff Jarrad Young broke the record in both 2018 and 2021, with 2,806 and 3,054 push-ups respectively.

Helmke trained by breaking down the exercise sequence into 30-second sets, where he aimed to crank out 26 reps.

He decided to attempt the record after managing to hit a 26.7 push-up average, three years into his training.

Helmke undertook the challenge at the Iron Underground gym last November. He was required lower his body so that his elbows reached at least a 90-degree angle every time, and had to keep his body rigid on the way up.

Any improper form, which included bending of the knees or waist, and failing to reach a 90-degree angle, didn’t go towards the count. Helmke only was docked for 34 bad push-ups in the full hour.

He announced the record on his Facebook last month with a post of the certificate, which was captioned: “This one finally came through.”

Helmke has plans to take on more challenges and acquire additional world records for various physical feats.

“This will be the first record I wish to set of a number of other push up records,” he said. “Then onto other physical records.”

There’s no telling how long he’ll hold his previous title, as American Rob Stirling, 60, reportedly eked out 3,264 push-ups in late March, but Guinness has not officially recognized the Floridians’ claim.

How Two Good Samaritans Rescued Missing Children Wandering In Winter Weather

A bus driver and a pizza delivery driver became everyday heroes, when they both noticed two children wandering outside in the cold, a state away from each other.

Minneapolis bus driver Ambrose Younge was finishing up his route during a winter blizzard, when he noticed a grammar school-aged boy was wandering around with a backpack on in the harsh conditions, despite classes being cancelled do to the storm.

“There was a child in the road, he was tugging on the handle of the door, of a car, trying to get in the car,” he said, according to TODAY.

“And as I was thinking, I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here.’”

Younge was able to coax the freezing boy, who turned out to be autistic, onto the bus. He immediately called transit control, and learned that the 9-year-old boy had been reported missing.

“As a bus operator, it’s my job to take care of people.” he said. “Here’s a kid in need – I need to get him someplace safe and warm.”

Younge said the boy was “anxious” while they waited for police to arrive, and he kept talking to him, despite the child being “difficult to communicate with” and non-verbal.

As it turns out, the lost child gave his carer the slip during the storm. He was later reunited with his family, after police investigated and cleared them of negligence.

Younge doesn’t believe that his actions were heroic. “I consider myself a dad because that’s what I would hope someone would do for my child,” he noted. “I guess we are the guardians of the city.”

A pizza delivery in Michigan also became a hero, when saved the live of a young child on a cold winter night.

Grand Rapids resident Gabe Botello was delivering a pizza when he saw a toddler aged girl wandering around outside in the cold at 3:00 a.m. last weekend.

He handed off the food to the people who had ordered, and the father of seven went off in search of the little girl.

When he couldn’t immediately find her, he drove around to a few different parking lots, before eventually spotting her at a factory across the street.

Botello said that when he found the 3-year-old girl, she was hiding between two cement blocks, dressed in only a t-shirt, diaper, and socks, despite the harsh winter weather.

The Villa Pizza driver scooped the child up in his sweatshirt and brought her back to his warm car, where they waited for police to arrive.

“I had some water in my car, so she was drinking some water and I was just kind of like rubbing her back, letting her know she was okay and she started falling asleep,” said Botello.

“She was so just like exhausted and cold,” he noted.

Law enforcement eventually located the girl’s mother, who had no idea that she was not asleep in her bed and had been missing.

Like Younge, Botello doesn’t think that his actions were anything but human. “I just tried to do what I could. I assume somebody would do the same for my kids,” he remarked.

Famous Actor’s Son Saves Driver From Sinking Vehicle

“Superman & Lois” star Dylan Walsh’s 26-year-old son became an everyday hero when he saved a driver who had plunged their car into Baltimore’s Patapsco River on Wednesday.

An employee at local fish staple, Phillips Seafood, was walking into work at the Inner Harbor location, when she saw a crowd of people looking into the water, where a white car was slowly sinking.

She ran into the restaurant to tell her coworkers about the incident, and Tom Walsh, a sous chef and military veteran, outside to see what was going on.

Bystanders were shouting for the driver to get out of the car, but he was unwilling, or unable to exit the sinking vehicle.

Walsh dove in to the harbor, which is notorious for being foul smelling due to”decades of sewage overflows and industrial waste dumping,” and swam to the submerged SUV.

During the rescue, which was caught on camera, Walsh initially tried to bust the passenger side window with his naked fist.

When that didn’t work, the Iraq War Vet jumped onto the white SUV’s hood, and kicked it out.

The car was nearly fully submerged by the time Walsh was able to drag the man through the broken windshield and help him swim to the side of the harbor.

A group of bystanders tossed in a life ring and helped tow them in, then helped both Walsh and the unidentified driver climb to safety up a ladder.

By the time first responders got to the scene, the only task they had was tending to their minor injuries.

Phillips Seafood spokesperson Michelle Torres, who witnessed the ordeal, said that their four year long employee was injured, but was more concerned about the state of the driver.

“The focus was on the victim,” she told The Baltimore Banner, noting that Wash’s “hand is like, all the way cut up. His whole knuckles are busted.”

Both were transported to a local hospital for minor injuries, and the totaled SUV was fished out of the harbor.

Walsh’s father, actor Dylan Walsh, who rose to fame in FX’s dark plastic surgery drama “Nip/Tuck,” beside costar Julian McMahon from 2003 to 2010, said he “is very proud” of his everyday hero son.

Off-Duty Firefighter Saves Cop From Flaming Patrol Car

A Florida firefighter pulled a Sheriff’s deputy out of a flaming patrol car, after witnessing the incident while taking his son to soccer practice.

Orlando Fire Department’s Lt. Benjamin Wootson and his eight-year-old son were running late to Saturday practice because the child was “dragging his feet,” which may be the reason Deputy Matthew Luxon, 33, is still alive.

Wootson noticed the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office patrol car at it was passing his own vehicle in the opposite direction, and out of his “habit of always looking” in his car mirrors, saw the SUV slam into the support column of an overpass.

“I immediately pulled a U-turn at the next intersection and rushed back,” the firefighter told WFTV9.

“By the time i got on scene, there was a little bit of flames on the underneath of the vehicle, the engine compartment was already on fire.”

Wootson helped Luxon, who was disoriented, get off his seatbelt and yanked him out of the mangled SUV, which had burst into flames after smashing into the pillar head on.

“As I was pulling him out there were probably two golf ball-size flames where his legs were,” he noted.

His intervention was incredibly timely, as immediately after he got Luxon clear of the wreck, the entire vehicle went up in flames and the ammunition in the trunk went off “like fireworks.”

Wootson grabbed the radio off of Luxon’s chest and called in an “officer down scenario.”

Other drivers also stopped to help, including Wootson’s neighbor, who stayed with his son while the firefighter tended to Luxon’s medical needs.

The accident was reportedly caused when the deputy suffered from an unknown medical event, which prompted him to plow into the overpass uncontrolled.

Luxon, who is a member of the Seminole County Sheriff’s SWAT team, was taken to local hospital and underwent several successful surgeries on Saturday before being stabilized, and will have to undergo at least one more.

A GoFundMe page has raised more than $30,000 to help support what Sheriff Dennis Lemma described as “his long road to recovery.”

Wootson for his part, doesn’t think his actions were heroic, and encourages regular people to be vigilant in similar situations.

“Don’t just sit back and watch, get out, do what’s right, (and) make a change,” he remarked. “Because those little things could be long-impact, lasting; it could be generational changes.”

“God put me in a place where we were running late – I was in the right place at the right time to save someone from having a catastrophic injury,” he detailed.

“It’s who I am it’s what we all do. Firefighters, first responders. We are not here to be heroes, we are here to be normal – to help people in need on and off duty,” Wootson concluded.

Skier Saves Snowboarder Buried Alive Upside Down In Tree Well

A Washington State snowboarder owes his life to a highly experienced skier who dug him out he was buried alive in a tree well of deep snow on an off-beaten path.

Advanced skier Francis Zuber was heading down a clearly out of bounds path on northwestern Washington’s Mt. Baker Ski Area on the first Friday of March, when he became an everyday hero.

Zuber was filming his dangerous descent through treacherously tight evergreens, when he noticed the tip of a board poking out a mound of snow that was packed high and dangerously close to a tree.

“Oh, s–t,” he remarked, and called out to the snowboarder to ask if they were “alright.”

When the Zuber got no answer, he quickly pulled of both skis and used them to pack down a path towards the snowboard.

He immediately started digging furiously with both gloved hands and eventually saw a forearm encased in a teal jacket and black mitten reaching out.

Zuber dug with renewed force, until he was able to free snowboarders entire left arm, which he lifted to gently excavate a man’s face encased in reflective blue ski googles. 

He uncovered the area around the man’s lips and and sighed in relief. “Okay, you alright,” he asked.

“Doing good,” Ian Steger replied.

Zuber took off for his pack and returned with a portable shovel. “I’ll get you out of here in a sec,” he told Steger as he furiously dug him out.

“Take your time, man,” the incredibly chill snowboarder told him.

Zuber shared his heroic moment online, along with a warning about the dangers of skiing or snowboarding to close to trees, which are known to be sinkholes of snow.

“Tree wells are real,” he captioned the video on Instagram.

“The mountains don’t care how much skill or experience you have. They don’t even care if you and your ski partners are doing everything right,” he cautioned.

He encouraged his followers to take an avalanche safety course to get trained on what they should do in a similar situation.

“I’m thankful I knew just enough to scrape by and perform a successful rescue,” Zuber concluded. “And always look out for each other out there.”

Both men spoke to Eyewitness News about the terrifying ordeal on Friday. “I caught this little flash of red out of the corner of my eye,” Zuber recalled.

“And I knew it was kind of a weird thing to see because we’re out of bounds. I knew something was wrong. You know, I yelled up to him, and no response.”

Steger said that he had no idea he was being rescued, because he couldn’t hear anything underneath all of the snow.

“He was letting me know he was coming up to me. I didn’t hear any of that,” he noted. “It was complete darkness. I could only hear, you know, the sound of my own breathing.”

According to experts, based on how he was positioned upside down, there’s no way he would have been able to get free without assistance from another person.

“One of the things that I was thinking about while I was down there was like, wow, like, I’m going to die down here and I’m not going to be able to, you know, tell my fiancee how much I love her,” Steger said.

An Elderly Army Vet Was Robbed Of His Life Savings, A Waitress Helped Him Recover The Funds

A 91-year-old Army veteran was robbed while he was on the way to make a bank deposit, and his community rallied around him to replace the money.

Korean War vet Floyd Barber saved $7,000 in cash for dental work, and was on his way to Chase Bank to deposit the money on March 8, when he stopped to get some gas in his hometown of Tucson, Arizona.

While Barber was at the pump, a woman he had seen around, but didn’t know approached him.

Though they were total strangers, she kissed and hugged him like they were relatives, all the while patting him down for his assets.

Unfortunately, Barber had put the cash in an envelope in his pocket, and she managed to get a hold of it. He quickly realized the woman had robbed him, and pulled out the gun he carries for protection.

“I wasn’t going to shoot her, but it didn’t scare her and she just started taking off,” he noted.

A young man pumping gas next to him chased after her, but she got away. When the police arrived to interview him, Barber told them the woman was a local scammer who had targeted him a few times in other parking lots trying to sell him a fake gold ring.

After the incident, he took refuge at a family restaurant that he has frequented weekly for the last decade.

His longtime waitress, Sherri Tacchia, 55, who described Floyd as “just the kindest person,” asked him why he looked so downtrodden, and was shocked by his story.

“He wasn’t panicked, but more in disbelief, I guess,” Tacchia told Fox News Digital. “He told me nothing like this has happened to him in 91 years.”

Barber was absolutely sick over not going directly to Chase. “I should have just went to the bank instead of stopping to get gas,” he remarked.

“I’m a good person. It shouldn’t have happened. I give money away even when I can’t afford it. That shouldn’t have happened to me,” Barber told local outlet KOLD.

Tacchia, who frequently chats with Floyd over his preferred meal of soup and a glass of milk, was broken hearted over his distress.

Sherri’s also the mother of two veterans and the daughter of one, so she was unable to understand how somebody could treat a service member so cruelly.

“He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. So, I sat down with him and asked if I could please help him, if he’d let me. He said, ‘Sure.’”

Tacchia called KOLD and told them Barber’s story, then asked her daughter to set up a GoFundMe to help recover some of the funds.

The new station interviewed Barber at Tacchia’s house the following Sunday, and donations from locals started pouring in.

The GoFundMe page raised more than two thousand dollars over the initial $10,000 goal, and community members have been going into the restaurant to donate directly as well.

Tacchia said that a local dentist offered to handle Barber’s dental work pro-bono, so he could keep the cash they raised, and his appointment is set for April.

“It makes me feel real good to know that there’s more good people out there than bad people,” Barber said about the effort.

Over the weekend, he and Tacchia went to the the bank together to transfer the money into his account.

Though Barber tried to offer her payment for helping him, Tacchia said she obviously refused.

“I told him he deserves this,” she remarked. “The real heroes are the public who listened with their hearts and gave back to a very humble soul, Floyd. All I want is a lifetime of friendship.” 

The Marana Police Department is still looking for the woman who robbed Barber.

Restaurateur Opens Ice Cream Franchise To Employ People With Special Needs

A Dallas restaurateur created an entire ice cream franchise so he could help employ people with special needs obtain quality jobs.

Texas native Tom Landis, 54, spent years growing his fast casual food empire with pizza chains and sandwich shops, but when it came to hiring, he realized that people with special needs weren’t a good fit for rapid pace service.

Rather than choose to overlook applicants with Downs Syndrome and other disabilities, he created an entire restaurant concept where differently-abled people would be able to run the show.

Landis read legendary Alabama football coach Gene Stallings’ book, Another Season: A Coach’s Story of Raising an Exceptional Son, about his late son Johnny, who was born with Downs Syndrome.

Throughout his storied career, Stallings became a fierce advocate for projects that created better education and quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities.

Decades later, Landis discovered that the employment landscape for the developmentally disabled was still lacking in opportunities.

“Right now, it’s a sad state of existence that it’s not that way,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “We’re going to change it.”

To help turn the tide, Landis opened up Howdy Homemade Ice Cream in late 2015, and staffed the shop with high-functioning people with developmental issues, like Down syndrome and autism.

Despite the mission, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Landis, who invested everything he had into launching Howdy Homemade, and nearly fell short two months prior to opening.

Landis was $25,000 short and willing to put his house on the line to fund the ice cream shops launch, when he met real estate attorney Jeff Matthews, who is also a passionate advocate for Downs Syndrome.

Matthew’s lent Landis the cash and told him to pay it back when he could afford it. “What Tom is doing is an extension of the mission that I’ve been working on for six years to make the prospects for families and children with Down syndrome better,” the attorney commented.

“You see the joy that comes to the faces of these families when they see that once their kids get out of high school there’s a job for them,” he continued. “I’d rather give 25K to that than just about anything else.”

Growing the business was a struggle for Landis, he sold of the last of his two sandwich franchises in 2017 to cover his debts, but found success at the Texas State Fair.

Howdy’s Funnel Cake ice Cream flavor, created by franchise Vice President Coleman Jones, who also has Downs Syndrome, was voted one of the 10 best food picks in 2018.

They also big with signature ice cream flavor, Dr Pepper Chocolate Chip, which is the only flavor officially sanctioned by the Texas-based soda-pop company.

Dr. Pepper granted Landis exclusive ice cream rights, and gave them a huge leg up with branding by creating marketing material and deploying ads on billboards and buses to promote the flavor.

“We appreciate Tom’s passionate support of Dr Pepper, but we also are big fans of his mission to provide work opportunities to people with special needs,” said the Dr. Pepper’s brand director.

Landis’ intention wasn’t just to start a single ice cream shop, but a franchise that could help employ people with special needs nationwide, and even globally.

“I want to make it as cheap as possible to get into,” he said. “Almost everybody who wants to open are families of children with special needs because no one else is hiring them.”

Currently there are 10 Howdy Homemade Ice Cream shops, located in five states across the nation.

“Our goal is that we would be in all 160 countries that hosts the special Olympics that we would be in China, where the rate of autism in America is now an astounding one in 67 in China,” he commented in an interview.

Tim McGraw Grants Dying Man’s Wish To Record Duet For His Daughters

A Florida man with stage 4 cancer only has months to live, but country superstar Tim McGraw granted his dying wish of somehow being present for his young daughters’ future weddings.

Mike Hugo, was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a median survival rate of 14 months, almost exactly a year ago.

The young father has two daughters, Bridgette and Brooke, aged 6 and 7, who he has spent the last year attempting to teach “all the life lessons” he can in the short amount of time he has left.

In a video he posted to Facebook in early February, Hugo shared that he didn’t want to be a ghost to his two daughters as they grew up, and has taken to writing future birthday cards to them, so they remember that he loved them.

A teary-eyed Hugo said that he wants to be present for their future wedding days in any way possible.

“One of my dreams is to be with my little girls for their wedding and be there dancing with them, but statistically, it’s going to be tough,” he explained in the video.

“I’m going to fight hard to get there, but one of my dreams, or goals, is to do a duet with ‘My Little Girl’ with Tim McGraw.”

“If I’m there, it would be awesome because it’s a beautiful song,” Hugo continued. “And if I’m not there, then at least I can be part of that wonderful day that I hope happens and hope comes.”

He asked viewers to contact McGraw if they had the connections, and they certainly came through.

Shortly after he made the post, Hugo was contacted by McGraw’s representatives, who flew the family to Nashville meet the “I Like It, I Love It” singer at the Grand Ole Opry.

Hugo told Good Morning America that he put on a tuxedo and danced with his girls on stage, which will be turned into a video to accompany the duet he and McGraw performed of “My Little Girl,” a 2006 tribute to one of his three daughter with country star Faith Hill.

“He just couldn’t have been more gracious with his time and energy,” Hugo detailed about the singer.

“He still took the time to sing with somebody [who] can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

Hugo said that meeting McGraw was one of the many life lessons he had for his daughters.

“‘Hey, whatever you want to do? You could do it,'” he explained. “You know, the trick is to actually just do it.”

McGraw has been an advocate for brain cancer since his father, former MLB pitcher Tug McGraw, died from a glioblastoma brain tumor in 2004.

He established the Tug McGraw foundation to “enhance the quality of life for individuals diagnosed with debilitating neurological brain conditions such as glioblastoma brain tumors,  mild-traumatic brain injury from military exposures, and post-traumatic stress.”

The singer recorded one of his biggest hits “Live Like You Were Dying,” following his father’s passing, but almost didn’t release it, because he was afraid that others would claim he was “playing” off Tug’s death.

“My Uncle Hank was there, my dad’s older brother, and we had been recording all day,” McGraw recalled. “And about three o’clock in the morning, I looked around at the band. I said, ‘I think it’s time to do this song.’”

“We spent the next three hours up until sunup recording this song, and my uncle collapsed in a couch crying every time we did a pass of it.”

“That’s got to be one of the most special memories I have of making any music anywhere,” he concluded.

‘Quick Thinking’ Seventh Grader Hailed As Hero For Stopping School Bus After Driver Passed Out

A Michigan middle schooler saved a busload of children when their driver lost consciousness as she was dropping them off at home.

13-year-old Dillon Reeves heroically prevented a catastrophic accident from happening when his bus driver fell ill and passed out while ferrying 65 children home from Carter Middle School on Wednesday.

A video of the incident showed the driver fanning herself with her hat, then calling in to the transportation hub to report that she felt ill and needed to pull over.

Before the driver could safely stop the bus, she passed out. Seconds later, Reeves, who was sitting in the fifth row, took action.

The bus was reportedly beginning to veer into oncoming traffic, when Reeves grabbed the steering wheel and guided the bus back into the proper lane, while stepping on the brake.

“Someone call 911. Now,” he yelled back to his panicking peers.

“A quick-thinking 7th-grade male student saw the driver in distress, stepped to the front of the
bus and helped bring it to a stop without incident,” Superintendent Robert D. Livernois wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

“The actions of the student who helped stop the bus made all the difference today, and I could
not be prouder of his efforts.”

In a press conference on Thursday, he said that the act “was an extraordinary act of courage and maturity” on Reeves’ part.

Livernois noted that the tween hockey player and band member “had the wherewithal to push the brake down slowly – likely in anticipation that the bus was full of passengers.”

After stopping the bus, Reeves was assisted by two adults who witnessed the incident occur.

A passerby hopped onboard to help with the driver, while a woman who had been driving behind the bus stopped and helped kids exit through the emergency door in the back.

The bus driver was taken to the hospital by ambulance and is currently in stable condition.

“It’s amazing, and this is like, such a good feeling to be so proud,” his mother said in an interview with Fox 2 Detroit.

Reeves will be honored by the mayor his hometown Warren with a resolution of appreciation “for his heroic actions that go above and beyond what most people would do.”

Rescue Dog Saves Baby From Burning Building

A rescue dog paid it forward to the family that brought him home, when he saved their one-year-old daughter from their burning building.

A Detroit family picked the right pooch when they chose to adopt pitbull-Labrador mix, Blue, from a local animal shelter two years ago.

Janet Kelly told The Daily Mail that Blue is “very protective” of her four children, aged one to nine, but she didn’t know much until he raced into a burning building to save her baby, Chantal.

On Feb. 21, the family’s apartment caught fire when when a child from the unit below them was playing with a lighter and torched a mattress.

Kelly and her three eldest children were at Walmart with with her fiance, but Chantal was home in the care of her uncle.

The three-story house was instantly engulfed in black smoke and flames, which prevented the uncle from being able to reach Chantal, who was trapped on the second floor.

“I got a phone call that the house was on fire. My fiancé’s brother was at the home and he’s the one that called.” Kelly said about the ordeal.

“He was trying to rush and get the dog, the kids, and everybody out of the house.”

When firefighters arrived, the house was a raging inferno, but the former street dog managed to get them to go inside when he ran back into the building.

Kelly said firefighters chased after the dog, unaware that he was leading them to Chantal, who was trapped in her playpen.

The dog was dubbed a hero, once firefighters realized that he had led them to the forgotten baby, who was miraculously still alive.

Chantal was lucky to escape with her life, but the family lost everything and did not have renter’s insurance.

They were living out of a minivan until they were able to gather enough money to afford a hotel.

Kelly tried to get compensation for her family’s lost possessions, but their uncaring landlord told her “to start a GoFundMe page and go to a shelter” with her children.

“I just paid him rent two days prior to this, so when I asked him if he could give me something back, I got told ‘No, I have bills, too,'” she told USA Today.

Despite the landlord’s lack of empathy, the advice to start a donation page turned out to be solid.

Kelly set up a GoFundMe in an effort to move her family into a hotel until they could find other housing.

“Our entire life has been turned upside down,” she wrote. “I’ve reached out to the landlord (no help), I’ve reached out churches and organizations but still no help, so here I am.”

Kelly noted that setting up a donation page was “her last resort,” and that “anything” people were willing to give would be much “appreciated.”

The fundraiser netted the family $101,520 of a $100,000 goal. On March 2, Kelly updated the page with good news.

“I would like to thank everyone for all the help and everything,” she wrote. “This money will be applied to a new home for us. No more donations are needed.”

Passenger Lands Southwest Flight After Pilot’s Medical Emergency

A Southwest Airlines flight had to be diverted on Wednesday, after the pilot suffered from a medical emergency, and a passenger was the one to take over the controls.

Southwest Flight 6013 to Columbus, Ohio, left Las Vegas, Nevada, at 6:30 in the morning, when the pilot had such serious abdominal pain that it caused him to pass out midair.

What could have been another major crisis for the FAA, only resulted in a diverted flight, when one of the passengers turned out to be an off-duty pilot from another airline.

The unidentified pilot took over radio communication duties on the Flight Deck, while the co-pilot flew the plane, according to CBS News.

“The captain became incapacitated while enroute,” he called in to air traffic control.

“He’s in the back of the aircraft right now with a flight attendant, but we need to get him on an ambulance immediately.”

The flight crew was medically assisted by a nurse, who stepped in to treat the sick Captain while the flight returned to Las Vegas.

“It’s standard procedure for our Flight Crews to request assistance from traveling medical personnel during in-flight medical events involving Customers, this situation just so happened to involve one of our Employees,” Southwest Airlines said in a statement.

“We greatly appreciate their support and assistance,” spokesperson Chris Perry added.

The Hoeing 737 landed in Vegas just before 8:00 a.m., and a backup crew flew the passengers to Columbus.

Southwest did not disclose the nature of the pilot’s illness, or offer any updates on his condition.

In less savory flight news, a woman had to be dragged of a Frontier Airlines plane in Miami, after she threatened to harm a fellow passenger this week.

Texas native Simone Bryna Kim, 24, got into a verbal altercation with a male passenger, while their flight to Philadelphia was still grounded at Miami International Airport on Tuesday.

Kim screamed at a seated man in a blue and white baseball cap as the plane was in the middle of the boarding process.

“If you’re really from Philly, show me what’s up,” she yelled, as a harried flight attendant blocked her from advancing on the man.

“Show me what’s up. I’m going to beat you the f–k up on this s–t, I guarantee you, I guarantee you,” Kim ranted.

“I dare you, I dare you, what you trying to be on,” she continued.

Unfortunately for Kim, another passenger recorded the entire altercation and posted it to TikTok.

According to the Miami-Dade Police Department, the crew repeatedly asked her to depart the plane, but she refused.

Responding officers were forced to place her under arrest, but she began “pushing, pulling and tensing” in retaliation, and even scratched up an officer with her fingernails.

The behavior got worse as they escorted her off the jet bridge, when she kicked one of the law enforcement officers, which almost sent him toppling down the stairs.

The passenger recording was able to catch several officers carrying her out to a police cruiser as she fought them.

Kim reportedly tried to bite three of them and was kicking as they put leg restraints on her, while trying to get her into the vehicle.

Though she bonded out of jail, Kim faces a slew of charges for the ordeal. She was charged with a misdemeanor for trespassing, and three more for battery on a police officer.

Kim was also charged with two felonies for battery on a police officer and another for resisting an officer with violence.

Grandmother Finds $15K In Cash, What Happened Next Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

The most honest woman in Michigan stumbled across an abandoned bag of cash, and instead of keeping it, she turned over the found money to the police.

65-year-old Dianne Gordon has been walking 2.5 miles a day from her mobile home to her job as a deli worker, since her Jeep broke down a year ago and she couldn’t afford to fix it.

On a chilly winter day in January, Gordon stopped at a gas station for a snack on the trek home from work, and stumbled across a plastic bag containing 15K.

“I looked down on the ground and found a plastic bag with a large sum of money in it,” she told WJBK. “When you turned it over, there was even more money.”

That kind of money could have guaranteed that the grandmother of two would have never had to trudge through harsh weather to get to work again.

Instead, Gordon told the Washington Post that she did what she “was taught to do,” and called the police, who took the cash into their custody.

As it turns out, White Lake police was able to locate the owners of the bag, who were a pair of newlyweds, that were “overwhelmed” by Gordon’s choice to do the right thing.

“Inside the bag was also wedding cards, these were gifts from a wedding that occurred that day,” said Lt. Matthew Ivory. “I think it was $14,780 worth of cash.”

“She didn’t hesitate; she didn’t question it,” Police Chief Dan Keller remarked about Gordon. “This doesn’t happen very often, that someone finds a large sum of money and turns it in.”

White Lake Sergeant Brad Connell was so floored by Dianne’s goodness, he told his wife the tale and she decided they had to take action.

“My wife said we’ve got to do something,” Connell explained. “My wife got with the chief and started the GoFundMe page.”

Stacy Connell set up a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds to get Gordon some new wheels.

“Dianne does not have a vehicle, and walks back and forth to VC’s daily, regardless of the Michigan elements, where she works in the deli,” Connell wrote on the page.

“She self admittedly “needed the money” and “it would be life-changing” for her, but that she didn’t think twice about not turning it in,” she continued. “Dianne is a perfect example of integrity and selflessness even in her own time of need.”

Nearly three thousand donations later, the GoFundMe raised over $82,000 for Gordon, who doesn’t think she did “anything special” for returning the newlywed’s cash.

“All I did was return something that didn’t belong to me,” she commented.

The Connell and the police department used the funds to buy Gordon a brand new Jeep Compass from a local dealer days later.

They plan to use the rest of the funds to complete “some much needed repairs” on Gordon’s home.

“I am floored. I am having a hard time keeping it in. I am just so excited,” Gordon said about the funds.

She plans to “pay it forward” to carless co-workers and drive them home, while cruising around to see her nearest and dearest.

“My grandson is 13 and he plays hockey. And my granddaughter is 11 and she does gymnastics and I haven’t seen her play or do gymnastics yet,” she explained.

“So that’s going to be very important that I get to see her do that. It means the world to me. I miss them so much.”

Minor League Mainstay Gets Called Up To The Majors After 13 Years

A veteran minor league baseball player finally got called up to the show after playing 13 seasons on Double and Triple-A teams.

Drew Maggi played a whopping 1,155 games as a minor league player, before learning that he was getting his shot at the big league at 33-years-old.

The infielder delivered his first three-hit performance of the season on April 14th, handily helping the Altoona Curve crush the Erie SeaWolves by 4-2.

The following Saturday, the Curve’s manager, Calix Crabbe, who also serves as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ assistant hitting coach shocked Maggi with the news that he was getting promoted.

“In spring training, we talked about how life is like a journey. We talked about three words. We talked about perspective. We talked about choice. We talked about grit,” Crabbe said in a video filmed in the team’s locker room.

“Some of us have had the chance to be in the major leagues and it was for one day. And there’s going to be some of us are going to get a chance to take that one day and turn into one plus,” he continued.

“And so it is with great pleasure that I get to promote my first person to the major leagues and someone that is tremendously important to this group and someone that exemplifies grit,” Crabbe concluded in the a viral clip that was viewed three million times.

Maggi was shirtless and visibly stunned while the team clapped for him, then finally rose to his feet and exclaimed, “Holy s–t. Let’s f–king go!”

The journeyman player was called up once before by the Minnesota Twins in 2021, but didn’t play in either of the two games he was optioned for, before the team sent him back the minors.

“Obviously, I would have loved to get in there and it didn’t happen, but everything happens for a reason. Now, I’m just a little more hungry,” he said at the time.

Though he was worried that he might not get another chance. “You always believe that you can get another shot, but as you get older, you have that in your mind: ‘This could be it for me,’” the infielder remarked.

When Maggi made his long-awaited Major League debut as a Pittsburgh Pirate on Wednesday, the crowd gave him a standing ovation and chanted his name.

“I can’t explain how I was feeling in the box,” he told UPI News.

“I didn’t even know what to do. [The crowd] was cheering me on. I never expected that. I thought I’d make my debut and it would be a normal at-bat.”

Unfortunately, Maggi struck out as the designated hitter, and learned that he was being demoted back down to the minors.

Despite that knowledge, Maggi showed up the next day when the team kept him active during as the 27th man during their double header against the Washington Nationals on Saturday.

His first turn at bat came during the 7th inning of the second game of the day, where he cracked his fist Major League hit for an RBI single that put the Pirates ahead by 13-0.

“I didn’t know how long I was going to be up here,” Maggi recalled. “I really wanted to get a hit.”

“I’ve been kind of thinking about it the past day, two days. When I got in there, I was just trying to slow everything down. They were cheering my name, and I was just trying to breathe.”

“It was like the perfect hit, too, ’cause I saw it go right through the middle, and it’s so vivid in my mind right now,” he told Yahoo! Sports. “I was so happy I got it done, got that weight lifted off my shoulders.”

Maggi closed the game with his first career extra-base hit during the ninth inning, and despite being sent back down to Double-A, he’s glad he finally got his shot.

“Just hearing that you’re a big leaguer, it’s a different feeling,” Maggi commented. “I got to a certain point where it was like, ‘You know what, it doesn’t matter. I love playing baseball.”

“As long as I have a jersey on and I’m having a good time, whatever.’ That little Major League barrier, I always knew I could do it. When it finally got said, I broke down.”

Middle School Students Fight Off Kidnapper At Bus Stop

A Maryland man attempted to snatch a student waiting at a bus stop, but was thwarted by a few brave preteens.

Jamaal Germany, 30, was arrested for trying to abduct an unnamed middle school child aged 11 to 13, while they waited to catch their school bus to Redland Middle School on Monday morning.

The incident happened at around 7:20 in the morning, when Germany approached the child and dragged them towards a nearby apartment building.

A few brave fellow students became everyday heroes, when they ganged up on Germany and helped get their classmate, who was unharmed, out of his grip.

The group boarded the bus when it arrived and told staff at Redland Middle School about the attempted crime when they made it safely to class.

Faculty members reported the incident to the school’s Community Engagement Officer, which led to investigators from Montgomery County Police Department arresting Germany.

The school district warned parents about the incident, and informed them of an increased police presence at the bus stop where the almost kidnapping occurred.

“You don’t expect to hear things like that in general happening so close to home,” said Redland Middle School parent Jartu Toweh.

“We know these things happen in the world, but it’s very unsettling when it happens close to your community.

According a neighbor, it’s not the first time that Germany has attempted to abduct a child.

“I have a high school student, and she catches the bus early in the morning,” said a local mother. “Apparently, he was at the bus stop last week doing the same thing.”

Three unidentified neighbors said that Germany had “threatened and yelled at them” in the past few days.

Another heroic student was honored at Oklahoma’s Lakeview Elementary for saving the life of a classmate.

When classmate Cashton York started choking on a chicken nugget, eight-year-old Garrett Brown sprung into action and performed the Heimlich maneuver, successfully dislodging the food.

“Extremely scary to know in a matter of seconds my child could have choked to death on food, at school when you’re not around,” York’s mom remarked

“There are not enough words to be grateful for saving him,” she added.

Brown was honored by the school and community for his life saving actions, which he had been trained to do by his father.

“My dad taught me. I was choking and he saved me and taught me to save someone else,” Brown commented.

40-Pound Cat Finds Forever Home, Stray Cares For Feline Friend With Dementia

An extremely fat feline was adopted by a Virginia retiree hours after his adoption ad went viral. 

Kay Ford was watching the finale of Disney+ Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian, when her daughter sent her a photo of Patches, an extremely flabby gray and white spotted tabby. 

Richmond Animal Care and Control had just gone viral for a hilarious Facebook post advertising for Patches’ forever home. 

“Did you wake up today and say, ‘Let’s adopt the largest cat anyone has ever seen?’ If so, we have the cat for you,” RACC captioned a fabulously fat photo of the cat. 

“Meet Patches; all 40.3 POUNDS of him! He’s been regulated to a very special diet, is on an exercise plan and is very sweet.”

The ad said that Patches was chipped and neutered, but any potential adopters would have to commit to a health and fitness plan. 

“Until then, we will marvel at his gloriously gluttonous body,” the RACC hilariously concluded. 

Ford said she saw the post and “knew immediately” that she needed to adopt Patches.  

She may have known that the cat should come home with her, but was sure that she was up against some stiff competition.

Patches adoption profile already had 1200 likes and 2,000 commentators, many who made offers to adopt the surrendered pet. 

Fortunately for Ford, she’s a Richmond local and didn’t have work to get in the way of her immediately driving to the shelter. 

When the pair met for the first time, Ford got onto the floor and Patches was instantly besotted with her. The feeling was mutual for the retiree. 

“I don’t know, I think with animals, you can just tell,” she said about their connection. “You just look at him and you go, ‘That’s my cat.’”

The shelter agreed and she was able to take Patches home. 

“I knew that I was in a position to help him,” she explained. “I’m retired, I’m home a lot.”

Anisa Rani, a British veterinary nursing student, is uniquely qualified and highly motivated to care for special needs felines. 

She has taken in 11 strays, and one of them, a three-legged cat named Clementine, has paid the care taking forward. 

Clementine came into Rani’s life when she was hit by a car and dropped off at the clinic she works at last August.

A surgeon amputated the cat’s leg and Rani was compelled to take her home. 

There she joined Juniper, a one-eared stray undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer and suffering the onset of dementia. 

“It started by her doing laps around the room, staring at walls every now and again and forgetting when she last ate,” Rani said. 

“We didn’t think she had long with us, she was given a life expectancy of four months.”

When she brought Clementine home, the pair quickly became best friends, despite Juniper’s distaste for every other cat in the house. 

Juniper’s spatial awareness began degrading and she began to bump into Clementine frequently, which the other cat took in stride. 

“When Juniper’s dementia declined, Clementine could definitely tell and became so much more patient with her,” Rani detailed. 

“She was so patient and sweet. She stopped being upset and was so much kinder to Juniper.”

When Juniper’s lung cancer worsened, she was only given four months to live, but with Clementine by her side, she survived for nearly a year before passing. 

Utah Man Hailed As Hero By Police For Saving His Elderly Friend From A Stabbing Attack

A Utah man’s quick thinking and heroic actions saved his friend’s life on Saturday when they were attacked while out walking their dogs, and police are praising him for it.

A 53-year-old man and his 68-year-old female companion were taking their dogs on an early morning stroll in Moab City, down a route close to Millcreek on April 22.

They saw a man who looked to have started a bonfire in a parking lot close to the stream, and the pair told him that pitching a tent and making a campfire inside of the city limits was strictly prohibited.

The recreational walkers continued down the path, but the camper, who was identified by the Moab City Police Department as 38-year-old Alex Kensell , attacked them in an “unprovoked assault.”

Kensell, who is homeless and recently moved into the area, reportedly blasted the man with a taser, which caused him to drop to the ground, then repeatedly stabbed his female friend with a fixed blade knife.

Once he recovered from the shock, the man forced Kensell off of his friend and created a diversion that caused the attacker to pursue him in foot chase.

MCPD said that his actions “effectively kept the assailant away from his friend.”

Responding officers were able to locate the injured walkers when they heard the woman’s cries for help.

They arrested Kensell and administered medical attention to the woman on scene, until she was taken to a local hospital by ambulance.

Her injuries, which included four stab wounds and a broken sternum, were so severe that she was transferred to a regional hospital for advanced treatment.

According to MCPD’s press release about the incident, the female victim’s condition is now stable, but “she would not have survived the attack if her friend hadn’t reacted so quickly and heroically.”

“We want to recognize the heroism and bravery shown by the victim’s friend/neighbor. He has expressed the desire to remain anonymous and would request time to heal emotionally and deal with the trauma of the incident,” they wrote.

Kensell was booked into Grand County Jail and charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder, aggravated assault, and use of a dangerous weapon.

He told police he was “just trying to have a campfire,” but the two walkers made “rude comments” to him, and he attacked them because he was “tired of people messing with him.”

Kensell has a history of violence, and is currently out on probation following of felony charge of pointing a firearm in Oklahoma.

He was charged at the Seventh District Court in Grand County on April 26, and prosecutors filed a no-bail warrant request to restrict him from immediately posting bond after being booked and processed.

Minnesota Vikings Star Pulls Man Out Of Burning Car

Minnesota Vikings wide receiver K.J. Osborn became an everyday hero last weekend when he helped pull a driver out of a burning car crash in Austin, Texas.

Osborn shared the details about how he and three “absolute heroes” aided a driver who had smashed into a pillar in the early hours of Monday morning.

The NFL star was on his way home in an Uber on an Austin freeway at 2:30 a.m., when a vehicle sped past and crashed into a pillar of an overpass.

Osborn and his Uber driver, Abdul, pulled over to help when they saw the accident had left the car “up in flames” with the driver trapped inside.

“Most of the time the saying goes ‘wrong place wrong time.’ But this time I believe God had me, us, at the right place at the exact right time,” he wrote on Twitter.

The wide out told “Fox & Friends” that he and Abdul were joined by two other bystanders who had also witnessed the crash, and rushed to try to help.

He and two others were initially afraid that the flaming wreck “could blow up,” and were hesitant to approach the vehicle.

“But my Uber driver, Abdul, we went right up to the car, he opened the passenger door,” he told co-host Ainsley Earhardt.

“He was seeing if the driver was OK. We’re trying to see if he was alive and moving and things like that.”

Once the driver was “able to muster enough strength” to move his upper body into the passenger seat, Osborn and the fellow bystanders went over to pull him out, despite their fear of an explosion.

“I ran up, we initially pulled him out of the car, the car is burning, it’s in flames, he has blood on him, he’s bleeding, he’s obviously out of it. I’m thinking it’s gonna blow any second,” he explained on Monday’s episode of “The Adam Schefter Podcast.”

“But we were still close to the car and we didn’t know whether it was going to blow up,” he detailed to Earhardt on Wednesday.

“I was able to pick him up and we were able to carry him 10-15 yards and we were able to get him out of that situation.”

Osborne said that the driver was injured after the crash and bled all over his shirt, as he carried him away from the fiery wreck to safety.

In the aftermath, the Vikings’ player has had trouble sleeping, but is “just grateful that I was in the position to be able to help him.”

Had his night, or entire off-season gone according to plan, he wouldn’t have been there to offer assistance.

“I would’ve never been in Austin, Texas, had my trainer not moved down here. I missed my first Uber and I was in my second Uber,” he commented to Fox News. “The timing of it was crazy. Happy I was able to be there.”

The former fifth round draft pick out University of Miami said that he took action, because he dreams of being a federal law enforcement agent.

In the moment, he was rallied by the courage of his fellow bystanders to overcome his fear of a potential explosion.

“Football didn’t matter then,” Osborne concluded. “We were trying to save a man’s life.”

In his social media post about the incident, the NFL player had a parting thought for his followers: “God is real. And his LOVE is real. He

7-Year-Old Boy Flings Himself Off A Cliff To Save Baby Brother’s Life

A 3-year-old Oklahoma child was saved from a 100-foot cliff fall in part due to his 7-year-old brother’s bravery.

On February 25, the two boys were hiking a trail in the Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Sulphur with their grandmother, sister, and dog.

As they were descending from the summit of Bromide Hill, their dog traversed close to the edge of the rock face.

When three-year-old Riley Duke tried to grab the family pet, he went over the cliff and plunged down into an icy stream below.

According to The Oklahoman, his big brother Dakota didn’t hesitate to take off after him, and slid down what was essentially a 100 foot vertical fall without fear for his own life. 

Dakota was miraculously able to scramble down the cliffside to aid his injured little brother, and had the wherewithal to hold the boy’s head out of the water as they waited for help in the chilly water.

“[Dakota] just didn’t have quite enough strength to get him all the way up, but he got his head out from underneath the water,” the boys’ mother, Amy Branom detailed.

Branom said that the boys’ grandmother called emergency services as she made her way down the mountain. She also noted that her mother was unaware of how treacherous the trail actually was, as there were no signs or guardrails.

Once they were dispatched at 5:34 p.m., park rangers reached the boys miraculously quickly. They were able get both brothers out of the creek with the help of the Sulphur Fire Department and Murray County EMS.

Dakota and Riley were treated on scene, and swiftly rushed off to two separate local hospitals within a span of sixteen minutes. They were later transferred to the Oklahoma Children’s Hospital, which has a Level 1 pediatric trauma center, to treat their severe injuries from the fall.

Riley suffered a several broken ribs, a fractured wrist, facial lacerations, a broken forehead and brain damage. He is currently stable in the ICU, but remains on a ventilator, feeding tube, and catheter.

Thankfully, he is conscious and able to reply to yes and no questions by nodding or shaking his head, but is unable to open his eyes due to the extreme swelling.

Dakota was treated for lacerations on his forehead, back of the head and a deeply skinned knee, but was released from the hospital two days later.

According to his mother, is unsure if his actions were brave, or rash. Luckily, she has reassured him that he is indeed an everyday hero.

“I’ve tried to tell him over and over again, that you 100% have done the correct thing,” Branom told The Oklahoman.

“You saved your baby brother,” she assured her son. “We’ll never be able to really thank him enough for what he did, honestly.”

High School Athletes Help Shelter Dogs Find Forever Homes

A Florida high school cross-country team has taken to running with shelter pups to help promote their adoptability to their local community.

George Steinbrenner High School’s Boss Cross long-distance running team has been taking dogs rescued by the Humane Society of Tampa Bay on runs for the last six years.

Their head coach Allison Szponar said that one of the boys’ mothers saw that the Humane Society was looking for volunteers, and the coaching staff decided to partner with the shelter by taking the pups out for daily runs during breaks from school.

The benefit of the experience is two-fold for the dogs; they get to go on a fun excursion outside of the shelter and are introduced to the community they run in.

Several of the boys’ families and neighbors have adopted the dogs after repeatedly noticing the pups out and about around town.

“The team understands the importance to the dogs but also to the community at large. Their families or neighbors might adopt any of these dogs,” a manager at Humane Society of Tampa Bay remarked.

According to their coach the volunteer opportunity aligns with the team motto, “Gentleman. Scholar. Athlete.”

“It’s a really cool brand we have, and it goes along with what our team is about,” Szponar said.

“I truly believe that these kids having this responsibility and having to care for others directly impacts our team and our success.”

In Detroit, Michigan, a heartbroken German shepherd was spotted wandering around a neighborhood with a stuffed toy, after her elderly owner passed away.

Local residents saw the dog, desperately searching for her deceased owner, while carrying the toy around like a security blanket.

South Lyon Murphy Lost Animal Recovery was dispatched to capture the senior pup, and after a few attempts that she deftly evaded, they brought her to a local animal shelter.

Both the dog, who they dubbed Nikki, and her stuffed toy were in bad shape upon intake, but the shelter was able to get them back up to snuff.

Nikki required hydration, rest, and medication, while the stuff toy was in desperate need of a good wash and some stitching.

The dog was reunited with her stuffed animal hours later, but was so weak and exhausted, she would “just sleep on it,” according to shelter staff.

Since her rescue, Nikki has gone into foster care with a “wonderful” family, as she continues medical treatment and waits to find a forever family.

Another rescue dog, based out of Amsterdam, Netherlands, was adopted by a new family, but spent her initial days cowering in her owner’s bed and refusing to venture out.

In a heartwarming video, Effie the rescue puppy has become a new dog in the month she’s been in her forever home.

In the TikTok post, which has been viewed over 178,000 times, Effie can be seen digging holes in a field, romping around a trail, getting belly rubs, and cuddling up to her owners.

CrossFit Coach And Father Drown After Saving Wife From Ocean Riptide

A much loved Phoenix CrossFit coach who always “wanted to be a superhero” drowned alongside his father, after saving his wife from a rip current during a family trip to Puerto Rico.

Damian Walker, 33, traveled to the Caribbean island to spread his grandfather’s ashes in the ocean with members of his paternal family.

His wife, Salmeh and a few other family members were swept away in a rogue rip current, and Walker dove into the sea to save them.

“Damian jumped in, as he 100% lived his life with that hero mentality: ‘I’m just gonna go in and save them,’” Tiffany Divelbiss, his boss and co-owner of Wildfire CrossFit, told WSAZ News Channel.

Salmeh and the others were able to make it to land, but Walker was struggling to get back in.

His father, who also shared his son’s heroic spirit, swam out to save Damien, but neither of them came back to shore. Walker’s dad’s body was never recovered from the water.

“He would be proud of the way things happened. He always wanted to be a superhero, and in the end, that’s the way it ended up,” Wildfire co-owner Skip Divelbiss remarked.

Walker had been a coach at the Arizona CrossFit gym for 10 years, after signing up as a member and transitioning into a paid employee.

“He always just wanted people to succeed and be able to be their best and have fun with it, and that’s just the energy he always brought,” Skip added.

According to Walker’s mother, Dorthy Walker, he was the type of guy that would save any animal he came across, and “sometimes take them home with him.”

He and Salmeh, who she said he loved “with all that he had and more,” shared three dogs together.

Dorthy said that Damien was studying to be a doctor after earning his bachelor of exercise science degree.

“Damian had such a huge heart and a huge, positive impact on everyone there and anyone who Damian touched with his loving and caring heart,” she wrote in his obituary.

“He had a way of making every single person he met feel special,” the gym said in a statement announcing his death. “He would save every animal on the planet if he could.”

“He left this life the way he lived it,” they wrote about their fallen co-worker. “All in and sacrificing himself for someone else.”

Walker’s 34th birthday would have been on April 2nd, and WIldfire CrossFit will be holding a celebration of life the same day.

The gym has created a “hero workout” of all Walker’s favorite exercise moves, and members will complete the workout in Walker’s honor on his birthday.

They have also created a GoFundMe to help the family with funeral expenses. The page has raised just of $30,000 of a $35,000 goal.

Forget The Limo: Senior Takes A Tank To Prom

When high school junior Sherman Bynum told his potential date that he’d be “tankful” to take her to the prom, he wasn’t just being pithy.

The teenage tank enthusiast became a bonafide legend when he and his date rolled up to the Camas High School prom in World War II tank.

“We don’t like normal very much,” the Oregon resident told local outlet WJHG-News this week.

“I think the quote that we’ve been repeating a lot today is, you know, today’s the day, man. And we’re feeling really good.”

Bynum came up with the idea in February, when he learned that his high school was hosting the prom at the Portland Art Museum, but made some initial inquires that didn’t pan out.

“I made some phone calls to a group in Minnesota that rents battle tanks out for you to select for builders and stuff,” he remarked. “They were like $20,000, you know, and that’s happening.”

He also tried a local museum, and while they were unable to rent him an armored fighting vehicle, they did connect him with someone who could.

Bynum contacted Steve Greenburg, who owns a M3A1 Stuart tank from WWII, and struck a deal for battle-worthy escort to the dance.

He looped in his best friend, senior Sam Tetro, and the the pair created a clever social media video to help raise funds needed to make his outlandish idea happen.

“The price tag is $1000. And so we decided to turn a GoFundMe by the end of the night,” Brynum detailed to KOIN 6 News.

“When that GoFundMe is posted, we had about 570 bucks, we’d reached the next goal within the next few days.”

The high school junior made sure he had all his ducks in a row, so his epic stunt wouldn’t be ruined by law enforcement.

“This act will be perfectly legal,” he explained. “According to all documents provided by the State of Oregon, and the information about the tank, we will be safely within road limits, and legal to carry this out. We are just looking to have fun and make a scene.”

Bynum maximized the fun by hiring a unicycle riding flaming bagpipe player to escort the tank in to the “Star Wars” theme song.

“Live your life to the fullest. That’s what it’s all about,” the young man added wisely.

Two Ride Or Dies Donate Kidney’s To Save Friends’ Lives

A Long Island art teacher and physical therapist both went into kidney failure and were looking at a six to eight year wait for new organs, until their friends stepped up to the plate.

Kathleen Gerlach, 68, went into kidney failure at the age of eighteen, after a severe case of strep throat damaged both organs.

For a year-and-a-half, Gerlach endured dialysis treatments multiple times a week, while she attended college classes.

“The toxins build up in your body and your coloring’s not good. Your blood is not good. You have no energy,” she said about how she felt physically during the waiting period. “It was really, really difficult.”

When she was twenty years old, she received a new kidney from a deceased organ donor, which gave her the chance to graduate college and become a high school art teacher.

Decades later, the transplanted kidney began to fail and she was forced to go back on dialysis while awaiting a new organ, which could take up to a decade to obtain.

Physical therapist assistant John Primavera, 49, was in the same boat. He was born with a kidney condition that caused the organs not to grow along with his body, and got his first transplant at the age of 14.

After 35 years, the donated kidney began to fail, and Primavera was forced to stop working, when he became too weak due to the dialysis treatments, which have a 50% mortality rate after five years.

Luckily for Gerlach and Primavera, they each had a friend that was willing to sacrifice a kidney to save their lives.

For Gerlach, that person was a co-worker at the the Long Island high school she taught at. Instead of languishing for more than half-a-decade on dialysis, the selfless act meant she got a new kidney in less than a year, and was able to keep teaching.

Primavera’s living donor came in the form of his best friend Tom Kenny, who he has known since they were both 9-years-old, and turned out to be a perfect donor.

“The surgeons said it could not be a better match. It was such a good match, it was as if we were brothers,” he told Fox News Digital after their recent surgery.

He reported that they were “both doing well” and that he has a second chance at life because of Tom, who he is “forever grateful to.”

“Without this selfless act, I would have waited close to seven years for a kidney and would have had to be on dialysis. With that wait time, I might not have made it to get transplanted,” Primavera said.

“I have a new lease on life — a life free from dialysis. I can enjoy traveling again,” he detailed. “I will be able to enjoy life to the fullest and see my daughter Soraya continue to mature and reach all her milestones.”

Ticia Hanisch, 76, a cancer survivor, recently was delighted to meet her donor this week.

Hanisch fell ill with acute myeloid leukemia in 2018, and her only chance at living was a stem cell transplant.

Her doctors in Houston, Texas, enrolled her in a global donor registry, and she was miraculously able to hang on for a year until she was matched with an anonymous donor in Europe.

Dominik Brandenburg was expecting a baby with his heavily pregnant girlfriend, but traveled to Cologne, Germany, in 2019 to donate to Hanisch, who he did not know.

The two corresponded anonymously for two years, as was required by the rules of the donor registry, and were finally able to meet this week, when Brandenburg traveled to Texas.

“My heart was pumping,” he said about finally seeing Hanisch in person. “I was so excited to meet her.”

“The gratitude is incredible,” she remarked. “When we met in person, that feeling was magnified.”

Canadian Woman Helps The Elderly Re-Home Their Beloved Pets Before They Pass

A Canadian woman has helped seniors at the end of their lives re-home 100 of their pets through a foundation she created to give them peace of mind about how their furry friends will survive after they can no longer care for them.

Angela Rafuse was motivated to launch her charity when her 85-year-old grandfather passed away in 2019, leaving his cat Mackenzie homeless.

“At the time, there wasn’t any other option other than a family member to adopt her or to put her into a shelter,” Rafuse told CTV News.

Angela decided to take in the calico cat on her own, because none of her relatives wanted to shoulder the responsibility, due to Mackenzie’s “mean, grumpy” demeanor.

“I didn’t want her to spend her final years in a shelter, so I decided to adopt her,” she shared.

Angela quickly recognized that despite Mackenzie’s agitated demeanor and excessive hissing, the feline was just frightened after the passing of her human.

The elderly feline ultimately warmed up to her new owner after receiving plenty of affection and care, which inspired the Canadian woman to launch a the rescue in 2021.

Angela’s non-profit organization, “My Grandfather’s Cat,” fosters the adoption of dogs and cats owned by seniors who are terminally ill, or desire to relocate to a retirement home that doesn’t accept animals.

Angela moved into her parents home in Nova Scotia with the cat she has affectionately dubbed “Mackie” after a bad break up, and began sharing videos of of her grumpy pet on TikTok.

The videos went viral and the pair amassed a following of 656,000 people, many of whom had similar stories regarding how their deceased grandparents’ pets had to be placed in shelters.

“I don’t really have words for it anymore. I try to articulate and explain what’s happening but it’s hard,” Rafuse said about their surge in popularity.

“It is almost like we’re reminding people about this forgotten group and we don’t do it in a sad, or grieving, or make-you-feel-guilty way — we try to do it in an inspiring way and an empowering way.”

Now most of the rescue’s intake comes from care homes and shelters refer that refer seniors to My Grandfather’s Cat. They simply have to submit an application, and the charity’s team creates a social media profile for their pet to help them find their new forever home.

When potential adopters are identified, the charity interviews the candidates to determine which home will be a suitable match, and the senior who is giving up their beloved pet gets the chance to speak with the family to ensure their compatibility.

“They get to interview each family that’s interested in adopting their animal, and ultimately they choose who adopts their animal,” she noted.

The foundation doesn’t just serve seniors, it also helps those who have fallen gravely ill at a less advanced age.

“For a lot of people, they get to a point in their lives where they know that they need extended care, or a lot of younger people, as terrible as it is, get diagnosed with a terminal illness (and) the pets are the ones that get left behind,” she noted.

“My Grandfather’s Cat helps seniors and terminally ill people arrange homes for their pets before they move into their retirement homes or pass away.”

With more than 41.5 million likes on TikTok, Rafuse has so many people interested in her rescue, that there’s a list of 50-60 people waiting to be approved to foster pets.

She has a group of 15 volunteers who help her coordinate with ailing pet owners on a national level, to keep their furry loved ones out of shelters.

“Our criteria is that you have to have a cell phone that you’re willing to use, you have to be mentally strong — as mentally strong as any of us can be in this pandemic — to be willing to deal with a senior or a grieving family,” Rafuse said about potential fosters.

Rafuse’s niche foundation offers hope to pet owners at the end of their lives.

“You can take control of your situation, even if you are terminally ill or if you’re a senior moving into a retirement home,” she remarked. “You don’t have to not have a plan for your animal.”

Mom Who Spent Life Savings On Daughter’s Cancer Care Wins The Lottery A Day After Final Treatment

A Florida mother won a $2 million dollar lottery jackpot on a scratch-off ticket that she purchased the day after her daughter completed her last cancer treatment.

Geraldine Gimblet is having a great week. On Thursday, her beloved daughter finished her final treatment for breast cancer, and the next day she won a fortune.

Her good fortune is extremely well time, because the Lakeland resident had just spent her life savings making sure that her adult child was able to receive the life saving care her condition required.

“The day before my mom bought this ticket, I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer,” Giblet’s daughter told the Florida Lottery.

“My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick,” she detailed. “I’m just so happy for her!”

Gimblet didn’t just get lucky, her persistence played a factor in scoring the jackpot. When she initially tried purchasing the $2,000,000 Bonus Cashword scratch-off game at her local convenience store, the cashier couldn’t find any.

But Gimblet knew that she wanted to play the $10 game, which has a 1-in-3.12 chance of winning, so she asked the cashier again and it paid off insanely well.

“At first the gas station clerk thought there were no tickets left, but I asked him to double check because I like the crossword games the best,” she explained. “He found the last one!”

The crossword puzzle themed scratcher has been a hot ticket since launching in 2022. Gimblet claimed the the the fifth of eight $2 million jackpots, which she won against 1-in-3,921,270 odds.

She chose to collect her winnings in a single, lump-sum payment of $1,645,000.00, which was awarded to her in early January.

Gimblet accepted the lottery’s obscenely large – in physical size and numerous zeros – check, with her mother and daughter by her side.

A North Carolina man recently won a $20 scratch-off ticket that paid $2 million, which was the second time he won the lottery in less than two years.

Pharris Frank bought a scratch-off from the North Carolina Education Fund in 2021, and ended up funding a dream wedding to his then fiance, when he won a cool $1 million jackpot.

Last month, the construction worker was out of town on a job, when he bought a $2,000,000 Diamond Dazzler ticked and scratched off the grand prize.

“It’s crazy because the day before I won, my buddy was asking me how it felt to win $1 million,” he remarked. “And I told him that I was going to double it.”

Frank said that winning for a second time left him “in shock for awhile,” but he immediately called his now wife and told her that he “did it again.”

Like Gimblet, Frank opted to take the lump sum, but took home nearly $450,000 less with a $1.2 million payout.

“It’s cool because the first time I won it was two miles from my house and this time I was four and a half hours away,” he said.

“What are the chances of me being down there at that exact moment in time?”

This time Frank is planning to take his wife on a dream vacation with his winnings.

Lost Dog Trekked 150-Mile Over Alaskan Sea Ice To Reunite With Family

An amazing pooch was reunited with his family after making a more than 150-mile journey across Alaskan sea ice.

Mandy Iworrigan and her family were visiting relatives on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska, when two of their Australian shepherd’s took off to the nearby tundra.

She sent her husband out to look for the dogs, but they had vanished. Iworrigan and her family eventually returned home without their canine companions.

Two and a half weeks later, one of the missing mutts, Starlight, showed up 37 miles away, but their one-year-old dog, Nanuq, wasn’t with her.

Iworrigan turned to Facebook to get the word out about Nanuq’s disappearance. A week later, her father reported that he saw a photo of a similar looking dog in a town that was over 166 miles away.

A Facebook group used by the people of Seward Peninsula had been posting photos of an unknown dog wandering through the area.

When Iworrigan viewed the images, she knew right away that the dog was Nanuq.

“I was like, ‘No freakin’ way! That’s our dog! What is he doing in Wales?’ ” she remarked.

Nanuq’s journey seems virtually impossible, as the only way to traverse from St. Lawrence Island to Wales was across more than 150 miles of sea ice.

“I have no idea why he ended up in Wales. Maybe the ice shifted while he was hunting,” Iworrigan posited.

“I’m pretty sure he ate leftovers of seal or caught a seal. Probably birds, too. He eats our Native foods. He’s smart.”

Though undoubtedly clever enough to survive, Nanug’s journey was definitely treacherous. He reportedly had two large bite marks on his body and a slightly marred leg in the aftermath.

“Wolverine, seal, small [polar bear], we don’t know, because it’s like a really big bite,” Iworrigan noted.

Nanuq was cared for by a brother and sister in Wales for several days, while Iworrigan figured out how to get him home to St. Lawrence Island.

She was eventually able to get him on a charter flight out of a nearby town and filmed her family reuniting with the dog on April 6, over a month after he had gone missing.

He is being treated for his wounds with medication donated from PAWS.

High School Senior Gets Accepted To Over 100 Schools And Has $9 Million In Scholarship Offers

A New Orleans high school senior has received $9 million in college scholarship offers, but is hoping to hit double digits by the end of the month.

Dennis Barnes, a senior at International High School of New Orleans, may have broken the Guinness World Record for most scholarship offers, after applying 200 colleges across the nation.

The impressive student has a GPA of 4.98 and is a leader in his school’s National Honor Society chapter.

In his spare time, he’s learned fluent Spanish, and has spent the last two years earning college credits at the Southern University of New Orleans.

“I submitted college applications in August, with an eye on raising the bar high for college admissions. Decision letters were an overflow in my mailbox and hundreds of scholarship offers,” Barnes told local news outlet WWL.

He was accepted to 125 schools in the fall, and hopes to reach $10 million in scholarship offers in his pursuit to double major in computer science and criminal justice after graduating high school on May 24.

Though the Guinness Book of World Records has yet to officially confirm it, he has beat the previous scholarship record, held by a Lafayette, Louisiana high school senior in 2019, by $300,000.

“The road to a successful future is to plan ahead, network with the collegiate partners, and know that If you can see your vision, you can achieve your goal,” Barnes advised seniors applying to colleges.

Atlanta high school senior Daya Brown, 18, who has been accepted to 54 colleges and received $1.3 million in scholarships said that standing out was the key to her success.

“Realistically, these schools have a hard acceptance rate. People from all over the world send in applications,” she told the Washington Post. “You want to do whatever you can to make yours stand out.”

“I have a great GPA, but I knew that my SAT scores weren’t going to be the best and I wouldn’t be at the level of many other kids who were applying,” Brown explained.

“Colleges love the uniqueness about applications,” she advised high school students.

“Sign up for those internships and go apply for that job. Go to that volunteer experience because they want to see who you are as a person.”

Brown was the student council president for all four years of her high school experience, and co-founded podcast “The Scholar Social,” before opening her own production company, Elom & Co., in 2021.

She spent three hours a day over a four month period applying to 70 different colleges and had more than a 77% acceptance rate.

“No, it wasn’t easy. Yes, you have to stay up many nights to get the work done,” Brown told Good Morning America.

“But at the same time, it wouldn’t feel like such a burden if it’s your passion. I wake up every day, happy about what I do.”

She has since committed to attending Duke University in North Carolina, where she plans to major in visual and media studies.

Sheriff’s Deputy Delivers Baby On The Side Of Highway

A Florida deputy delivered a baby on the side of a highway when a pregnant woman’s water broke in-transit.

Deputy Daniel “Red” Jones was on the side of a Plant City, Florida highway, when a father-to-be approached him in a panic on Sunday

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Luis Lopez told Jones that his wife’s water had broke and she was about to give birth.

Jones called for backup from the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, but the child was coming too quickly to wait for emergency medical services.

The 22-year veteran deputy sprung into action and delivered the baby on the side of the road, a feat that was fully documented on his body camera.

In the video, Jones could be heard telling the expectant mother to breath through the contractions and seen clutching her hand in his latex gloved one, while he provided her with “constant encouragement and emotional support.”

He asked the woman if she was full term and if it was her first child, but she responded that it was her sixth.

“Six? Woo, you all need a better hobby,” he remarked, which made her bark out laughing.

He tried to keep her positioned on her side until an ambulance arrived, but the baby girl refused to comply, and Jones ended up delivering her in the front seat of her parent’s car.

The little girl, who her parents named Lexela Luis Lopez, was the third child that Jones has delivered since joining the HSCO in December 2001.

“I am extremely proud of Master Deputy Jones’s quick actions and dedication to serving our community in any capacity,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said.

“While delivering in the front seat of a car was not the original birth plan, Master Deputy Jones reassured the mother of six that she was in good hands.”

The baby’s father, Luis Lopez, was grateful that Jones stepped in to get his wife and daughter through the scary situation.

“I want to thank the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Department for having amazing officers that helped us to deliver our baby girl at Highway 60,” the new father told Tampa Bay 10.

“Also, thanks to the fire department and EMS team for the awesome job they did there.”

Hero Cop Took Down Texas Mall Shooter Without Backup

A police officer desperately pleaded for backup during a mass shooting at Texas Mall, but managed to take down the gunman by himself.

An unnamed police officer rushed into danger on Saturday afternoon, when 33-year-old Mauricio Martinez Garcia opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets with an AR-15 style rifle.

“I’ve got people running. There’s still shooting,” the brave officer called over the radio. “I need everybody I got.”

The hero cop was at the mall on an unrelated call, and despite being on his own, he rushed into the H&M store Garcia was unloading his weapon in.

Two minutes after he called for reinforcements, the lone law enforcement agent was able to take out the shooter.

“I got him down,” he said in a recording of police audio obtained by The Daily Mail.

“He heard gunshots, went to the gunshots, engaged the suspect, and neutralized the suspect,” Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey said at a press conference.

Garcia was seen entering the mall wearing full tactical gear at around 3:30 on Saturday, when he gunned down at least fifteen people with dozens of bullets.

He killed eight people during the attack, six who died on scene, before he was killed by the brazen police officer.

The shooter, who lived with is parents, was reportedly proficient in firearms training and worked as a security guard.

His family’s home was raided by the FBI, and investigators are looking into possible ties to radical ideology, but believe that Garcia was working alone.

Dad Saves Son After Home Intruders Held Him At Gunpoint And Tased Family Dog

A Tennessee father was forced to take action, when armed intruders broke into his home and held his teenage son at gunpoint.

A Murfreesboro, Tennessee father was about to go out on Friday night at around 8:30pm, when he was held up by a phone call that may have saved the lifes of his son and mother.

The unidentified homeowner said that while he was on the call, he heard his dog make a noise that sounded like he was hurt, then heard the electric crackle of a taser.

He got the shock of his life, when he heard his teenage son plead with someone not to shoot him.

The man told Nashville News Channel 5 that’s when he retrieved his gun and found that masked intruders holding his son at gunpoint.

The father said that he shot at them instinctively. “It was either them or me — that’s how I was looking at it.”

52-year-old Kevin Ford found dead when police arrived on scene, but his crooked compatriot, Clifford Wright, 42, hobbled away with multiple gunshot wounds.

He was later found near a Salvation Army and taken to the hospital. Once he was treated, Wright released into police custody.

He was charged with multiple felonies, including aggravated burglary, attempted aggravated robbery, and possession of a firearm in the commission of a violent felony.

Wright is being held on $700,000 bond and will appear in court on June 5.

“I wish it wouldn’t have happened but I’m glad it went my way instead of their way,” the father of one said.

According to police, the homeowner will not be charged for protecting his family from the intruders.

Missing Woman Survives In The Wilderness For Five Days On Candy and A Bottle Of Wine

A woman managed to survive five days in the Australian outback on a bottle of wine and a few lollipops.

A 48-year-old woman, who police only identified by only her first name, Lillian, took a trip to mountainous tourist destination, Bright, Victoria, but never arrived at her destination.

When Lillian failed to check in with her family after departing, they alerted local police, who searched extensively throughout the dense bushland for days without any luck.

On the fifth day, police Air Wing spotted Lillian waiving to their helicopter in a remote area of Mitta Mitta, and sent a squad car to rescue her.

“After being lost in the bush for five days, she was extremely relieved and grateful to see us and we were just as happy to see her,” Victoria Police said in a statement.

Lillian was found at the end of a dirt road, where her car was stuck in mud. She had been trying to drive to Dartmouth Dam, but came to a dead end.

When Lillian realized she had taken a wrong turn, she tried to make her way back down the road, but became bogged down by the muddy unpaved road.

She tried to call for help, but the remote area, which was more than 37 miles away from the nearest town, had no cellular service.

Due to a health condition, she was unable to attempt to walk for help, which police said may have saved her life.

“She used great common sense to stay with her car and not wander off into bushland, which assisted in police being able to find her,” the press release stated.

Luckily, she was able to survive the plunging night temperatures which hit lows of 36 degrees, by running her car’s heater.

Unfortunately, Lillian had only planned to take a short day trip, so she did not pack anything beyond some candy, and did not have any water in the car.

Though she does not drink, Lillian had a bottle of wine that she bought as a present to her mother, and was able to sip it while waiting for rescuers.

8-Year-Old Boy Survives On Snow After Going Missing In State Park

An 8-year-old boy survived by eating snow while he was missing in the Michigan wilderness for 48-hours.

Nante Niemi was camping with his family over the weekend at Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, when he ventured into the woods to gather wood for their campfire.

The Wisconsin second grader’s parents reported that he was missing to the Michigan State Police (MSP) on Saturday night, when he didn’t return with kindling after last being seen during the early afternoon.

To add to his parent’s nightmare, the area they set up camp in was both “remote and hilly,” without cell phone service, and some roads were “impassible because of snow depth.”

Over 150 search and rescuers set out to scour a 40 square mile area on foot with K9’s, on water, and by air, but the Nante was not found on Saturday or Sunday.

Concerningly, the child had only been dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and temperatures both nights dropped into the 40s.

Rescuers caught a break when search member Matthew Tingstad found tracks left by the boy on Sunday night, but were unable to locate him.

“I called up a couple of friends that I know that are pretty capable of getting around in the woods,” he told WLUC.

“We devised a plan first thing this morning and we executed the plan, and we found the subject.”

Tingstad and Eli Talsma were part of the group that eventually found Nante 49-hours after he went missing.

Talsma, who is a friend of the family, was the person who first spotted Nante.

“I get over this little, tiny hill, and all I see is this little, tiny, white sweatshirt, and he goes, ‘Eli?’ And I just ran up over to him and I gave him the biggest hug,” he detailed.

“I was so relieved once I saw him.”

The boy told him that he had been following the blue check marks on trees, and had seen helicopters searching, but didn’t get their attention.

The MSP said that Nante walked a trail until it dead ended, then decided it would be best to stop there and wait until help came.

He was able to keep warm at night by covering a log with branches and leaves, then sleeping under it.

The clever boy didn’t have any food or water on him, but ate clean snow to stay hydrated.

When Tinstad and Talsma found him, the offered to carry Nante on his back, but he wanted to walk.

Eventually he was too fatigued and Talsma carried him back to safety, where he was reunited with his family.

Homeless Man Save A Baby From Getting Run Over

A baby in a run away stroller nearly rolled into a busy street in Hesperia, California earlier this week.

Ron Nessman, who is homeless, had just been on an interview for a dishwashing position at a nearby Applebee’s, and decided to rest on a bench near a car wash.

Nessman was in the right place at the right time, because just up the hill, a older woman was unloading items from her car with the baby boy by her side, and a strong gust of wind blew the helpless child’s stroller down the sharp decline.

The woman immediately noticed the baby was rolling away and chased after the carriage, but tripped onto her front and was unable to get to her feet as the baby hurtled towards speeding traffic.

Once Nessman saw the woman fall, he said that he didn’t even have time to think about his actions, and just reacted and to save the baby.

“I felt so bad for the lady,” he remarked. “I couldn’t imagine.”

Nessman wheeled the baby back to the woman and gave her a comforting hug.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did nothing,” he added. “I’m just glad I realized it and was on it.”

In the end, Nessman saved the boy’s life and getting a job offer from Applebee’s.

Across the pond, 18-year-old Aleira Kiran saved a baby from a fiery crash in Halifax, England.

A car crashed and burst into flames on top of a hill, while a double-decker bus waited for emergency services to clear the street.

“I was upstairs at the front and all I could see was flames,” Kiran said about the wreck. “It was like something out of Final Destination.”

Much to the horror of the 40 bus passengers, the car rolled down the hill and hit the front of the bus, where it lodged and lit the bus on fire.

While people made a mad dash to exit the mass transit vehicle, Kiran noticed two mothers struggling to get off with their strollers.

“One of the women was saying ‘Someone needs to take my kid’. She was in tears, so I took the baby and put my hood up to shield her,” the teenager said.

The mother eventually was able to get off the bus and thanked Kiran for the assist as she was reunited with her child.

Watch A Teenage Umpire Save PeeWee Baseball Catcher From A Dust Devil

A teenager became an everyday hero when wild weather struck at the local baseball diamond.

17-year-old Aiden Wiles was umpiring a three-game youth baseball tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, when a dust devil formed out of nowhere behind home plate.

The Fort Caroline Athletic Association Indians had a batter up, when a funnel of sand and debris formed right on top of the Ponte Vedra Sharks’ catcher on Sunday afternoon.

Seven-year-old Bauer Zoya struggled to get out up from his catcher’s crouch as the wind whipped around him.

“I couldn’t breathe that much,” Zoya said told local outlet News4Jax. “So I held my breath.”

“I feel like I couldn’t touch the ground,” he explained. “So I kind of lifted up a little bit.”

He eventually was able to stand, but was clearly disoriented as he struggled to get out of the tiny twister.

That’s when Wiles rushed to the plate, snatched Zoya out of the wind funnel, and carried him to safety.

Wiles said he was afraid of the odd weather phenomenon, but knew he had to help the pint-sized player.

“I was worried about his safety because when I got taught, the players’ safety is always the first thing,” he remarked.

Once the weather cleared up, the Mother’s Day match-up was back on, and Zoya took his place at the plate after his dad helped flush the dust out of his eyes with a water bottle wash-out.

The player’s father, Brian Zoya, was thankful that Wiles sprung into action to save his son.

“A kid that just had the presence in mind to just do that it’s just special to see,” he commented.

“It was pretty cool to see yesterday. He had great parents raising him.”

Despite his ordeal, the kid catcher believes that he played better because of the experience, because he was able to catch a pop fly during the game.

Dust devil’s are common occurrences throughout most of the world and normally only last for a few minutes before disappearing.

They typically occur on clear days with light wind, when heat from the ground creates a localized air pocket that forms into a spiraling vortex.

At their worst, dust devils can reach diameters of up to 300 feet, become thousands of feet tall, rotate at wind speeds over 60 mph, and last for more than an hour.

Lucky for Zoya, he was swept up into a relatively minor dust devil that dissipated after a few seconds.

How A 13-Year-Old Girl Fought Off Jaws

A tween girl detailed how she fought off a bull shark and won after being repeatedly bitten.

13-year-old Ella Reed was hanging out in the water with friend at a Florida beach close to her home on North Hutchinson Island when she was randomly attacked by a shark on Thursday.

The first bite came as an unexpected chomp to her side. “The shark itself was so powerful. That was what I felt the most because it was hitting my stomach really hard,” she told Local 10.

Ella protected herself by punching the shark, which only briefly deterred the creature before it swam back for more.

“It wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to use my arm and use my hand too, so it got my arm and my finger,” she detailed.

The shark bit her in the abdomen, arm, finger, and at the top of her knee, before she was able to get away.

The friend she was with swiftly transported Ella back home in a golf cart. When she arrived, her mother, Devin Reed, told WPTV that she “seriously thought it was a prank,” until she saw all of the gore.

“It was insane because she was totally covered in blood pretty much from head to toe,” Devin remarked.

But she was astounded by her daughter’s composure during the incident. “There was blood everywhere and she was more of a trooper than anyone else.”

“We were all just shocked that it even happened,” Devin explained. “She was so calm even when we got in the hospital. She was telling all the nurses, ‘You can take pictures.’ She was like a pro.”

Ella said that the trauma of the incident dulled her body’s response to the shark bites. “I was kinda in shock about everything that happened, so I wasn’t really in pain because the adrenaline was through the roof.”

She thinks that the predator who attacked her was a 5-6 foot bull shark, but said the incident wouldn’t keep her out of the ocean she has grown up next to.

Ella’s mother said that attack “doesn’t feel real” to her yet. “Never thought in a million years, not my kids,” she commented.

“They swim, go surfing. They know how to stay away from bait balls and stuff like that. The whole thing is surreal. It sounds like a movie.”

Elsewhere during what was apparently Shark Week, Hawaiian native Scott Haraguchi was fishing in his kayak a mile off of Oahu’s coast on Saturday, when a huge tiger shark rammed into his boat.

“I heard a whooshing sound that sounded like a boat heading towards me without the motor and I looked up and I saw this big brown thing my brain thought it was a turtle but then I got slammed by it and realized that it was a tiger shark,” Haraguchi told KITV.

Insanely, the entire ordeal was caught on camera, as Haraguchi had his GoPro turned on to film his latest catch.

He was able to kick the shark away, and even kept fishing, but noticed a wounded seal that he believes the shark mistook the kayak for.

The same day a 20 foot shark was spotted nearby, and officials shut down the area’s world famous North Beach.

Haraguchi told the outlet that he always fishes with a partner for safety, but is concerned about recent shark sightings and the attack on his watercraft.

“I realize that life is short, time is short on Earth, so make the most of it,” he said in reflection of the event.

Watch A 74-Year-Old Jogger Save Woman From Burning Hotel

74-year-old Greg Spike was on his daily jog when he saw a second floor hotel balcony engulfed in flames.

Spike was pacing his way through a running trail near the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon, when he noticed the three-alarm fire at the Valley River Inn, and took out his phone to film it as he jogged past.

He was startled when he heard Stacy Barkley crying for help from the balcony of the adjacent hotel room.

“I said, get out of there, get out of there, get out of there! And she said I cant, I can’t, there’s smoke in the hallway,” he told KVAL.

Barkley and her husband, Donald, flew in to the state to visit their son and pregnant daughter-in-law.

She was watching television and crafting in her hotel room while Donald was out in Eugene with his sister, when she heard the fire alarm go off.

Barkley opened the door to exit, but the hallway was filled with smoke and she was afraid of getting disoriented in the thick haze.

She called Donald and he told her to put a towel under the door and try to escape out the balcony, but was forced back into the room when the heat of the fire next door nearly burned her.

That’s when Spike stepped in to save her. “He didn’t even hesitate – he ran right over,” she told USA TODAY.

Spike instructed her to hang off of the balcony and he would catch her. “I said, ‘Come on, hit me, hit me,’” he detailed. “I was trying to tell her I would break her fall.”

Barkley lowered herself as much as possible before letting go. “He just said ‘jump,’ so I did, and he was there to save me,” she recalled.

He led Barkley away from the burning building and instructed her to take deep breaths through the face mask she was wearing.

She was overcome with gratitude an engulfed her everyday hero into a hug. “Oh my God, you saved me,” Barkley could be heard telling him on the video.

Shortly after, she was reunited with her husband and sister-in-law. As soon as they arrived, Spike scampered off to continue his jog.

“They said oh my god, oh my god, you saved my life! You saved my life, you saved her life, you know. And I ran off,” he said.

Spike got a few bruised ribs from the heroic endeavor, but said the incident took more of a mental toll because it reminded him of the time he spent fighting in Vietnam when he was in the Army.

“Last night, I couldn’t go to sleep because I kept going back there,” he told a reporter.

Barkley is grateful that Spike bravely answered her call for help.

“It’s hard to thank someone that saved you in that way, but he didn’t hesitate to answer my plea for help,” she remarked. “It was very kind of him.”

Florida Man Wrestles 12-Foot Alligator To Save Dog

A Florida man risked his life to brawl with a 12-foot long alligator that attacked his dog.

Fisher Greene and his girlfriend, Kylee Nyiri were walking their dog at Riverside Park near the Little Econ River last week in Oviedo, Florida.

When the couple and their 3-year-old explosive detecting K-9, Mako, got too close to the water, a large alligator rapidly emerged from the river and snapped up the pup.

Greene became an everyday hero when he jumped onto the back of four-yard long swamp creature to save his furry companion.

Luckily for Mako, Greene’s attack startled the gator enough to release the dog, who was literally able to escape the jaws of death. Amazingly, the man was not injured during the rescue attempt.

Greene and his girlfriend immediately rushed their pet to an animal hospital for treatment, but did not report the incident until the next day.

By Sunday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) sent a trapper out to capture the alligator, which was deemed a nuisance, because of its size and the unprovoked attack.

Area alligator hunter, Jerry Flynn, told WSVN that the Econ river “does hold a lot of alligators.”

“A lot of them are in the neighborhoods and when the retention ponds get low or hot, then they tend to go back into the Econ.”

Flynn’s team was dispatched to handle the nuisance gator, and it was captured by his nephew, Billy Girard, who happens to be a friend of Greene’s. Under the program, the animal was euthanized.

“We sell the meat and the hides,” Flynn noted. “That’s how we actually make a living. We don’t get paid by the state.”

The City of Oviedo’s communications director, Lisa McDonald, told Fox News Digital that there are known to be “several large alligators” in the area, and that dogs are often prime targets.

“Dog owners are highly discouraged from walking their pets near any body of water due to the dense alligator population, especially during alligator mating season,” she said.

According to WFLA, Mako had wounds to his torso and front right leg from the gator bite.

“Mako should make a full recovery!” Greene preemptively told the outlet.

But according to a GoFundMe page Nyiri created to cover the cost of Mako’s medical care, the Belgian Malinois is in critical condition.

He had five puncture wounds, three broken ribs, and a mild hemothorax from the dangerous encounter.

A surgery was performed to repair the damage to his body, but Mako had to be transferred to a larger emergency animal hospital for continued treatment.

Fluid built up around his lungs on Monday and had to be drained. As of Wednesday, Nyiri, who works with Mako detecting explosives, said that bilateral chest tubes had to be added to keep more fluid from building, and his care team was not sure where it was coming from.

So far Mako’s donation page has raised more than $2,000 over the original $15,000 goal.

Watch A Texas Cop Rescue A Kidnapped Baby

A Fort Worth Police officer rescued a kidnapped baby from a carjacking gone wrong and the footage is haunting.

In a truly horrifying cautionary tale for why children should never be left unattended in a motor-vehicle, a new mother left her six-month old baby in the backseat of her car and he was taken.

She was visiting her brother to drop off an item, and left her son in his carrier in the backseat of her still running car for less than two minutes on Monday.

That’s when opportunistic carjacker Elliot Reyes hopped into the vehicle and sped off with the baby still inside.

A neighbor who witnessed the car theft and likely unintended kidnapping called the police, and they were dispatched to the Fort Worth neighborhood.

Dozens of law enforcement officers canvased the area in search of the missing infant and got a break half-an-hour later.

The stolen vehicle was found a mile and a half from the residence it was snatched from. The thief was still inside, but the baby was not in the backseat.

“We were freaking out at that moment. We had no baby,’ Fort Worth Police Sergeant Ronnie Chau told FOX 4 Dallas.

Police arrested Reyes and pressed him for information on the baby’s whereabouts.

“We put him in a vehicle and had him direct us to where the baby was,” Chau detailed.

An hour-and-a-half after the boy was reported missing, Chau was the one to discover the baby, who was dangerously abandoned amongst trash at the dead end of a residential street.

In the body camera footage, Chau can be seen sprinting towards the baby and lifting him out of the carrier, while he comforted him.

Chau said the carrier was tipped precariously and the infant was dangling from the straps with one of his little feet in the dirt.

The baby was checked out by paramedics and cleared of any medical issues, before he was reunited with his mother.

Chau recalled that she was “very happy” but crying while she embraced her child. The sergeant said he was “elated” that the baby was found safely.

Family members of the infant said they knew who Reyes was, and that he could often be seen riding around the neighborhood on a bicycle, which was found abandoned near where the car went missing from

He has been charged with auto theft, kidnapping, and endangering a child’s welfare.

Boaters Rescue Pilot From Plane Crash

The pilot of a small plane crashed into Elliot Bay so he could avoid causing casualties on the ground, and has a group of boaters to thank for saving his life.

42-year-old Brendan Ross thinks his plane may have suffered from engine failure when it malfunctioned on Thursday, but he knew trying to land in the bay would save lives as he flew over Seattle.

“From that point you’ve got about 20 seconds to kind of figure out what’s going wrong, try to troubleshoot it,” Ross told KOMO News.

“Didn’t take long to realize that we weren’t going to be landing at an airport.”

“Really when you get into one of those scenarios your first thoughts are where am I going to put this plane somewhere that’s safe,” he explained.

Luckily, Ross was able to slow the plane to around 40 miles an hour before hitting the water, and had the foresight to open a window so he would be able to get out if he survived the impact.

Ross did in fact survive the water landing and quickly got out of the rapidly sinking aircraft. “I was able to force the door open, swam out,” he remarked.

Thomas Hawthorne, David Commarford, and two other friends were boating in the Puget Sound when they saw the plane go down.

“We were just hanging out out in the boat, enjoying the views of Seattle, and all of a sudden we see a plane coming in flying really low … then [it] crashed,” Commarford recalled.

The weren’t sure if they should go near the sinking plane, but saw Ross swimming and throttle over to his rescue.

One of their friends threw a rope to Ross and he was able to hold on while they towed him in.

“David grabbed his arm, and then we kind of all got over to the side of the boat and pulled him into the boat,” Hawthorne stated.

Ross had difficulty breathing and his face was covered with blood, but he was thrilled to be alive.

“It was nice to be able to catch a ride the rest of the way thanks to those good people,” he commented

“They couldn’t believe what they were seeing they said, ‘hey man we’re just out here having a few beers and we saw you go in and we thought maybe you needed help,’ and I said can I have one too?”

They took him back to a nearby pier, where paramedics were already waiting. Ross was transported to a local hospital to be treated, and then released a few hours later.

“My kids still have a dad and my wife still has a husband, I couldn’t ask for a better outcome honestly,” he said about the incident.

“That was about as well as it could have gone in terms of minimizing damage to the plane and to other people I think the worst of it is my face.”

The plane sunk several hundred feet from a pier in Elliot Bay, but it was recovered from the water over the weekend.

The aircraft will be analyzed by The National Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause of the crash.

Washington Man Survives Five Days After Plunging 150 Feet Into Ravine

A 56-year-old man is lucky to be alive after a car accident that plunged him 150 feet down a wooded ravine.

Danny Sansbury was missing for five days before he was found sick and seriously injured in his green pick-up truck, where it had crashed at the bottom of a steep drop into a densely forested area.

Police reportedly had initially considered foul play after Sansbury’s disappearance last week.

They were working an investigative path exploring potential criminal activity, but Sansbury’s decades-long friend, Terri Peck, wasn’t convinced.

“When he came up missing, we all just went, ‘There’s definitely something wrong. There’s something wrong,’” Peck told WFLA.

“I said, ‘I know he is in a ravine. He has to be.’ There was no other explanation. So, I started looking for him up and down a couple of ravines.”

But it wasn’t Peck who found Sansbury, it was a pair of motorists who spotted tire tracks going off a road and discovered the truck at the bottom of a steep ravine in Cowlitz County.

Their 9:30 a.m. 911 call on Sunday morning prompted the Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue team to hike down the hill in waist deep brush with the expectation of finding a body.

Firefighters were shocked when they found Sansbury still alive in his truck, unable to get out due to the nature of the injuries he sustained from the 150 foot drop.

Additional fire crews and a specialized rope rescue team from the Longview Fire Department were dispatched to extricate Sansbury from the vehicle and haul him up the bluff.

Once the got him to the top, he was taken to a local school by ambulance and airlifted to a level II trauma center in Vancouver, Washington.

Sansbury is currently in critical condition at Peace Health Southwest Medical Center, which Lt. Andy Worth of Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue said was exacerbated by his time trapped in the ravine.

“Being down there for five days — not eating, drinking — that definitely played effect with his injuries from the accident,” Worth commented.

Peck said she’s glad that fire crews got Sansbury out of the ravine about an hour after the initial emergency call, “because we knew he wasn’t going to have much more time.”

“I just want to cry to death, just knowing that he was here for six days by himself,” she detailed. “You know, it’s really hard to think that he was down there.”

Good Samaritans Rescues A Highway Patrolman Under Attack

An officer with the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was savagely attacked on the side of a busy road, but three brave bystanders rushed into action to save his life.

Everado Navarro was on his way to an event in Orange County last Friday when he witnessed a scene he couldn’t ignore.

Two men were locked in a vicious brawl on the side of the road. One of them was a cop, and he was losing to an aggressor who had him in a headlock.

In an abnormally heroic rescue that was caught on camera, Navarro pulled over and raced to the aid of the CHP officer.

Navarro told local outlet KCAL that he thought about his children in the moment, and how the officer likely had a family of his own that would like him to make it home from his shift safely.

The violent incident occurred around 5:00 p.m. near a busy freeway entrance in Santa Ana, according to CHP reports.

It began when two motorcycle cops approached a suspect who had been causing a disturbance on the road by yelling at drivers. After issuing a warning, instead of arresting the highway harasser, one of the officers departed.

The unnamed suspect took advantage of the remaining vulnerable police officer by taking a hold of his bike attacking him.

“Like he actually grabbed his bike,” Navarro recalled in shock. He saw the man throw the officer off of his bike and put him in a chokehold that he couldn’t break on his own, so he pulled over to help.

“When I actually get there, for a split second I didn’t know what to do. I just punched the guy in the ribs,” Navarro said.

He noted that the attacker didn’t seem to feel the hit and kept his hold tight. The brave motorist instead shifted his focus to stopping the suspect from grabbing the officer’s sidearm.

He was eventually joined by two more bystanders, and the group was able to wrestle the suspect off of the cop he’d rendered helpless.

Due to their intervention, the patrolman was able to walk away from the ordeal with only a minor injury to his thumb.

His attacker wasn’t so lucky, and had to be hospitalized with facial injuries for his insanely stupid stunt.

Navarro said that the officer was extremely thankful for the assist and expressed his gratitude in a heartfelt manner. “He thanked me five or six times,” he remarked.

California Highway Patrol spokesman Anselmo Templado was full of praise for Navarro and the other two everyday heroes.

He admitted that things may have taken a turn for the worst if they hadn’t intervened.

“It’s not very often that you see something like that. Usually, it’s just people recording and standing by,” he told ABC7 Eyewitness News.

After the fight was broken up, the assailant was arrested and booked into Orange County prison for assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.

Watch A Fan Fight Off Soccer Hooligans Attacking Family Section

A London soccer fan is being hailed as an everyday hero for bravely fighting off a massive group of Dutch fans trying to attack players’ families after a match.

Chris “Knollsy” Knoll, 58, has been dubbed “The Angel of Alkmaar,” after he fought off a group of rabid fans of the the Netherlands AZ Alkmaar, after they angrily tried to attack the family section of visiting West Ham United.

For the first time since 1976, an English Premier League team advanced to the Europa Conference League semi-finals.

Fans of the opposing team were so enraged that they pulled on their hoods to keep their identities hidden and converged on the visiting team’s families in the stands.

Concerned players tried to stop the violent group from approaching their nearest and dearest, but could not keep the tide of black back.

In a brawl that took security ten minutes to get under control, dozens of hooded men ascended the stairs to the family section, only to thwarted by the burly Englishman.

Knolls jumped into the fray when West Ham defender Thilo Kerher’s girlfriend was targeted by the mob.

Despite recently recovering from a hip replacement surgery, Knoll stood at the top of the stairs and held back dozens of fans with brutal punches and kicks that were caught on a spectator’s camera.

“I’m not a hero. I just did what I had to do,” he told The Daily Mail. “I don’t like bullies and just had to try and stop them.”

Knoll said that the crowd was initially “getting a little bit rowdy” after West Ham scored the game winning goal.

“I saw them all congregated on the side of the pitch and then they broke down the barriers and headed to the first group of West Ham fans,” he remarked.

“I know what they were intent on doing and was not going to let it happen,” Knoll detailed. “I just decided I wasn’t going to let them come up.”

“I just thought the best form of defense would be to get to the top of the stairs where they were coming up and just stood there and tried to stop them,” he said.

“I know they were swinging punches and I just did my best to stand there and take it.”

Knoll received a black eye and a torn shirt for his trouble, but the five-year season ticket holder didn’t realize that he had become West Ham hero until he went to Sunday’s home game.

Fans chanted his name at a pub outside London Stadium, and he received a standing ovation during the game.

“What a reception, a standing ovation, my own song and I never bought a single beer,” he remarked.

Knolls said that when he tried to exit after the game, it took him nearly an hour to walk halfway across the stadium, because so many people stopped to praise him.

“I was made to feel like the people’s champion. I noticed the amount of women thanking me for looking after their families. I’m on the crest of a wave at the moment.”

The team thanked him with a ticket to the Europa Conference finals, when West Ham faces of with Fiorentina in Prague on June 7.

A club official called while Knoll was at work, and he was so happy about the gift that he “nearly cried.”

The club official had been sitting two rows behind him at the AZ Alkmaar match, and witnessed his actions.

“She said I had been very courageous and that I deserved a ticket,” Knoll commented. “I know how difficult it is to get a ticket. I am so happy at this.”

“It’s ironic that she was the one who phoned me today,” he added. “I remember joking with her earlier about whether she could get me a ticket if we got to the final.”

Brave Customer Talks Down Would-Be Bank Robber

A quick thinking California man managed to convince a prospective bank robber to abandon his criminal intentions.

Michael Armus, Sr., 69, believes that fate sent him to the the right place at the right time, to prevent a crime that could have brought harm to customers at his local Bank of the West.

Armus arrived at the bank’s Woodland, California branch late Monday morning, when he immediately noticed that something was off with the normally cheerful bank tellers.

“I’m always joking around, and it wasn’t no jokes yesterday,” he recalled.

After recognizing the clear tension rolling off of the employees, his attention was drawn to a customer who was trying to shield his face with his shirt.

Armus had unknowingly walked into an active bank heist.

43-year-old Eduardo Plasencia had just passed a note to one of the tellers, which stated that he was armed and robbing the bank.

Plasencia’s became more agitated with Armus’ presence, and warned that he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Instead of cowering when he realized the situation he had walked into, Armus summoned his compassion and became an everyday hero.

He thought that the way Plasencia was speaking reeked of depression and desperation, so he decided to walk up to him.

As he was approaching, Armus shockingly recognized the man. “Like 25, 20 years ago, he lived in an apartment complex I did. I didn’t know him, but I have seen him around.”

“He was a friend of my daughter’s. That broke the ice for me,” he remarked.

Armed with their connection, the former neighbor believed he would be able to deescalate the situation.

“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘You don’t have a job?’ He said, ‘There’s nothing in this town for me. Nothing in this town for me. I just want to go to prison,'” Armus recounted.

Instead of being afraid of the potentially armed man, Armus consoled Plasencia and asked if he would give up his criminal pursuit to go talk.

“I took him outside, and I gave the man a hug right here at the doors,” Armus said.

“He started crying, and then I stepped away from him, and swoop, here come all the cops. No sirens, just lights everywhere.”

The Woodland police had already been alerted to the robbery and were waiting to step in.

Plasencia was immediately apprehended and booked him into the Yolo County jail for attempted robbery. Officer’s said that he was not actually armed.

Amazingly, Armus’s compassion was undeterred by the dangerous encounter and he’s considering visiting Plasencia in jail.

“Love overcomes all things. People don’t realize that. Try to be kind to somebody,” Armus said sagely. “It makes a difference.”

12-Year-Old Graduates From College With Five Degrees

A remarkable child genius collected not just one, but five college degrees last weekend, and a 72-year-old man became the oldest of his class to graduate.

12-year-old Clovis Hung became a Fullerton College record holder for the youngest graduate to earn multiple degrees.

He enrolled just three years ago, at the extremely impressive age of nine, and pursued higher knowledge in the fields of History, Social Sciences, Social Behavior and Self-Development, Arts and Human Expression, and Science and Mathematics.

“Clovis is super inquisitive, mature, diligent, self-disciplined, and highly motivated. He is also very curious and traditional public schools could not satisfy his curiosity, therefore, the best option was college,” his mother said in an interview.

Hung is “proud” that he graduated and feels that all of his “hard work has finally paid off.”

The young genius plans to work in a civil capacity when he’s is old enough to get a job without breaking child labor laws. Until then, he has his sights set on the skies.

“I also just joined the Civic Air Patrol and hope to get my pilot license at age 16,” Hung told CBS News.

Contrarily, a 72-year-old Georgia man became Georgia Gwinnett College’s oldest 2023 graduate.

Lawrenceville resident Sam Kaplan opted to skip out on pursuing a higher education when he graduated from high school in 1969.

Fifty years later, he changed his mind after hearing an advertisement for a local college program in 2019.

“I was riding down the highway and heard on the radio they were offering this degree,” he recalled.

“The next exit was Collinsville, so I exited off and five minutes later, I was registering for class.”

The author of two books enrolled in the cinema and media arts program to learn screenwriting.

“I’ve always liked to write, I love to tell stories,” he told Fox 5 Atlanta. “I thought I could turn my stories into screenplays, but I needed to have the foundation of what to do.”

He said that going back to school after fifty years was a “challenge” that he was thrilled about.

“Learning how to study again and interacting with the students was a lot of fun,” Kaplan remarked. “I’m very excited, and I feel proud of myself for doing this.”

When he graduated last week, Kaplan’s proudest moment was when his 98-year-old mother got to witness him walking across the stage.

“I am so proud of him,” she said of his accomplishment. “He had many challenges, but he persevered, and I am so pleased, delighted and very, very proud.”

“With his new degree, he’s going to be so successful in anything he does. And, who knows, I might even be in the movies.”

The Last Survivor Of Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Is 101

Navy veteran Lou Conter is the last known survivor of the USS Arizona battleship, which sunk after being bombed by the Japanese during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII.

The USS Arizona was one of the dozens of ships that were damaged or capsized during the surprise military strike on December 7, 1941, but its 1,177 dead sailors accounted for nearly half of the servicemen killed during the attack.

When Ken Potts died in April at 102-years-old, Conter became the last USS Arizona veteran at 101-years-old.

Conter enlisted in the Navy at 18-years-old, and was only 20 on the day of the attack, which happened while he was on watch.

“Everyone saw the red ball on the planes,” he recalled. “It was the Japanese rising sun, and we all knew what was happening.”

A 1,760-pound armor-piercing bomb hit the forward deck of the Arizona and blasted through five decks to ignite more than million pounds of gunpowder, and hundreds of thousands of pounds more of ammunition.

“The bow of the ship, all 34,000 tons, raised about 30 to 40 feet out of the water,” Conter wrote in his 2021 memoir.

“The ship was consumed in an enormous fireball that looked as if it engulfed everything from the mainmast forward.”

Conter was not hurt during the attack, and assisted the wounded onto lifeboats as the ship sunk. He also plucked dozens of other survivors out of the water as he rowed to shore.

“I consider the heroes the ones that gave their lives, that never came home to their families,” Conter told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re the real heroes.”

“As we guided these men to safety, more often than not, their burned skin would come off on our hands,” he wrote in a passage of his book.

After the devastating Pearl Harbor attack, Conter went to flight school and became a pilot. He flew combat missions in the South Pacific during the remainder of WWII, and was shot down twice.

Despite being downed in shark-infested waters, he instructed his crew to punch the sea creatures in the nose when they were attacked.

“And when the first one came along, I hit it in the nose and — boom! — it swam away, and they realized I was right,” he said.

Conter stayed in the service for 28 years, wrapping up his career as an intelligence officer during the Korean War, before he retired from the Navy as a lieutenant commander in 1967.

He went back to Pearl Harbor in 1991, to participate in the 50th year anniversary of the attack.

“When I walk aboard the USS Arizona Memorial and see those 1,177 names up there, I have to make the sign of the cross and say a prayer for them,” he commented.

“And I thank God my name is on the plaque outside with the survivors.”

He has since attended many of the yearly remembrances, but stopped going four years ago at his doctor’s insistence.

“I’d like to go once more,” he told the Journal.

Watch A Cowboy Dangerously Lasso A Runaway Cow On A Busy Highway

A brave cowboy managed to wrangle a bovine on a busy highway and prevent it from becoming burger meat.

Ricky Littlejohn and his horse Bucky saved lives on the Interstate-75 near Detroit, Michigan, when a stray cow managed to breach the highway, despite a heavy police presence aimed to deter the animal.

The cow, Lester, managed to escape it’s pasture several weeks ago, after being abandoned by the farm’s owners for six weeks.

Littlejohn, who is a professional wrangler, was dispatched to help when Lester was located near a gravel pit along the highway last week.

The 1200 pound steer was dangerously close to the I-75, so they called the Michigan State Police to manage traffic control.

“A team of wranglers comprised of men and women comparable to the cast of Yellowstone attempted to wrangle a cow that was stuck in a gravel pit on Belford Rd,” the department said in a statement. “Troopers stayed on standby to stop traffic on I 75 if necessary.”

They said that the wranglers, who were both on horseback and four wheelers, were “unsuccessful in their attempts” to capture Lester in the grassy knoll.

“The cow managed to outsmart its advisories, and entered the northbound lanes of I-75,” the department detailed.

“The wranglers chased the cow with four wheelers, horses, and lassos across all lanes of travel. Troopers shut down north and southbound lanes of I-75 for safety.”

That’s when Littlejohn and Bucky charged after Lester, which was a huge feat, considering the Bucky had horse shoes on his, which make it extremely slippery for a horse to run on concrete.

“It’s like a skating rink when you are running across there so we had to be really careful we didn’t wipe out ourselves and keep everybody safe while we got the job done,” Littlejohn explained.

In the amazing video, which was caught on Michigan State Police dashcam, Lester precariously darts onto the highway with Littlejohn in pursuit as cars whiz past.

The state trooper pulls out into traffic to prevent traffic from smashing into the animal, as Littlejohn expertly spins a lasso and manages to loop it around Lester’s neck.

A four wheeler ushered the captured bovine into the the grassy median and safely out of the harm of traffic.

“Eventually after much tom foolery, the critter was captured and removed from the freeway,” the department cheekily tweeted.

“Troopers reopened the freeway and things quickly got back to normal. The bovine was not charged and is back in the pasture with a story to tell all the other livestock.”

Littlejohn told “Fox & Friends” that he was “nervous” about the wrangling effort, but “really impressed” by his young steed.

“This was a pretty big job for him to go do, but I’ve taken him and did some practicing with him and he really came in pretty clutch,” he remarked.

“He [hoofed it] right in the middle of him and let me put a rope on him, I couldn’t be more happier.”

Littlejohn also noted that the video went unexpectedly viral and he’s been receiving a lot of attention because of it.

“My phone has been non-stop since the day we caught the cow, between Facebook messages, text messages, phone calls,” the everyday hero explained.

“All my friends blowing me up and everybody is telling me I’m the ‘new Yellowstone’ and it’s just funny.”

Man Rescues Toddlers From Burning Car Before It Explodes

A selfless Arizona man rescued a pair of toddlers from a burning car right before it exploded over Memorial Day weekend.

Sam Heiler, 30, who hails from Yuma, was heading on a holiday weekend trip with his wife, Melissa, on Thursday night, when they saw the car driving in front of them start smoking.

When the engine of the car caught fire, the car veered off the road and Heiler pulled over with them, as they were driving down a remote highway in Navajo County with sketchy phone service.

The parents of the children, who were a in the driver and passenger seats, immediately hopped out of the car, but when they reflexively shut the doors, the locks engaged.

With the keys still in the ignition, there was no way to get the the two little girls, aged two- and three-years-old, out of the back seat where they were trapped inside the burning vehicle.

Heiler said that the parents “were freaking out” and screaming as they ineffectually punched the windows with their bare hands.

“The girls were screaming, the parents were screaming, my wife was screaming—it was bad,” he said of the fire, which was getting larger by the second.

The father of the children panicked and attempted to shatter the back window with a rock as the flames spread throughout the hood of the vehicle, but fortunately, it failed to crack the glass, preventing the girls from being injured.

Heiler took over and broke a front window so he could open the door from the inside.

His wife said that worked to unbuckle one child, while the parents managed the restraints attached to the other one.

With both girls freed, they made a mad dash to where Heiler had parked 30 yards away, when the car combusted into flames.

He said that there was around 20 seconds from when the “fire spread from the engine block” to the interior of the vehicle.

“When the fire hit the fuel tank it made a legitimate fireball explosion,” Heiler detailed.

Without cell phone service, they waited until he could flag down another driver with an emergency light, and asked them to call emergency responders when they had signal, which was 25 miles down the road.

Tribal police and firefighters eventually arrived to put out the smouldering vehicle, and were forced to extinguish the spot fires that popped up in the Navajo County forest due to the delay.

Heiler and his wife were of two years, Melissa, were married in Tempe, Arizona on May 1, 2021. He proposed to her on a kayaking trip that she desperately wanted to go on.

Heiler got down on one knee when they got out to rest in at a scenic viewpoint, and then were greeted by family and friends who were gathered nearby to celebrate.

MLB Pitcher Takes The Mound After Defeating Cancer

A Major League Baseball reliever returned to the pitchers mound just months after revealing he was battling cancer.

Chicago White Sox pitcher Liam Hendriks received a standing ovation from the home crowd when he took the mound on Monday’s game against the Los Angeles Angels.

Hendriks return to baseball is a shocking feat after he announced that he had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in early January.

“Hearing the word ‘cancer’ came as a shock to my wife and I, as it does to millions of families each year,” he posted to Instagram at the beginning of the year.

“However I am resolved to embrace the fight and overcome this new challenge with the same determination I have used when facing other obstacles in my life.”

The reveal came the day before he entered treatment, and at the time the three-time All-Star predicted that he’d “be back on the mound as soon as possible.”

Four months later, he shared another post that revealed he had completed chemotherapy treatments and had gone into remission.

He shared a photo montage of undergoing various therapies, which appeared to involve a few times spent in a hospital bed, and finally building stamina back on a Peloton bike.

“How It Started VS How It’s Going…. REMISSION,” he posted on April 20. “It’s official. I’m cancer free.”

At the time, CBS Sports was unsure if Hendriks would be able to return to the White Sox’s roster, and predicted that getting back into playing shape would require a lengthy ramp-up.

“The White Sox did not place Hendricks on the 60-day injured list to begin the season, which theoretically means he could return before the end of May,” the outlet reported. “That, however, seems unlikely.”

Clearly they were wrong, because the 13 season veteran closer began rehabbing in Triple-A for Charlotte in mid-May.

At a May 3rd press conference, he told reporters that, “As of now I have a clean bill of health.”

Hendriks’ unwaveringly optimistic outlook about his diagnosis undoubtedly impacted his swift recovery.

“I never looked at it as a ‘why me thing?’ I looked at it as ‘why not me?'” He detailed.

“I tend to have a more rosy perspective on life than (most people) so that was my process behind it. ‘I’ve got this. This is my next challenge.'”

He opted to approach the standard length of chemo and other therapies as a obstacle to defeat.

“As soon as I found out the regular treatment timelines, I thought, ‘OK, how can I beat it?'” Hendriks remarked.

“It was those days on the couch, not being able to move much (after chemo), those were the days you needed to dig deep and find that positive mental attitude.”

The pitcher said that he didn’t “quite get” how uplifting his story would be for the fellow cancer suffers, until his wife Kristi explained it to him after his first game back in Triple-A.

“[She said], ‘This is more than about, Oh, you missed six weeks. It’s more about you overcoming something extreme and then that you are getting back on the mound so quickly,” he explained.

“I definitely appreciated that. It’s something that will follow me around for a little bit, I’m sure,” he continued.

Hendriks said that he wanted to have a “positive impact,” and “do right” by the people currently suffering from the same disease.

“I always have to take a step back and realize it’s not about the timeline you are at,” he asserted. “It’s about what you are going through and what you can represent to a lot of people.”

Hendriks was raucously applauded as he jogged to the pitcher’s mound in the eighth inning of Monday night’s game.

He was clearly emotional as he circled around to face every direction in acknowledgement of the cheering fans, before wiping at his eyes and getting down to business.

The veteran player threw a triumphant strike his first pitch of the game.

A Teen Born In Jail And An Almost Child Bride Make It To Harvard

Two young women who were raised under harrowing circumstances – one born to a jailed mother and the other nearly forced to marry at age 12 – both got accepted to Harvard University.

18-year-old Sky Castner was born in Galveston County Jail to an incarcerated mother, then picked up as a newborn and raised by her single father.

Castner was an avid reader at a young age and was introduced to a community mentorship program by the staff at her elementary school.

She was paired with Mona Hamby at 8-years-old, and the duo formed a decade long relationship.

“She told me ‘I’ve been to jail.’ I said “No, that can’t be right,’” Hambry told the Houston Chronicle. “I knew that I can’t just go eat lunch with this kid once a week, she needed more.”

Hambry, who also grew up without a mother, went above and beyond the mentorship program’s parameters, by taking her to get her first salon haircut and reading glasses.

“It was a very different environment than I grew up in and that’s not a bad thing,” Castner said.

“Everything that Mona taught me was very valuable in the same way that everything that I went through before Mona was very valuable.”

The teenager was also supported by the local community, who paid for her receive dental care and go to summer camp.

Castner joined her high school’s Academy for Health and Science Professions and graduated third in her class this year.

“There was something satisfying about having all As and having that accomplishment. Grades just meant a lot to me,” she said about the achievement.

She begins classes at Harvard in the fall, where she plans on studying law. Castner will be joined Aria Mustary, 23, who will begin her masters in Entrepreneurship, Education Leadership and Organizations.

Mustary was born to Bangladesh immigrants in New York, but her father tried to send her back to the country and marry her off to her first cousin at age 12.

“My mom had said no but my dad argued, ‘She’s rebellious, she doesn’t go to school anyway and she’s not going to go anywhere with her life so let’s just get her married off,'” she told Insider.

Mustary’s mother, Syeda, was a child bride herself, and a was unhappily forced to marry at a young age and bear two children.

When her father argued that they did not have enough resources to properly support the family, Mustary was able convince Syeda to leave that day.

“I begged my mom to divorce him and leave the oppressive environment,” she detailed. “Enough was enough.”

Syeda and the two girls moved to an apartment in Queens, New York, where she opened a small fabric business to make ends meet.

Mustary said that many of her female relatives were married off at young ages due to financial reasons, and believe that if there were better options, their parents would not force them to wed.

She created the Mai Soli Foundation to teach young girls in developing countries to be self-sufficient.

“Based on my personal life, I wanted to create a program to help young girls secure their own education, have financial literacy, open bank accounts, and create incentives for families so they don’t resort to marriage,” Mustary explained.

Due to her ambition and achievements, she was accepted into the Harvard University masters program in the fall.

Pregnant Woman Rescues Her Family From Attacker

A fierce mother-to-be protected her family from an unprovoked attack over Memorial Day weekend.

A family that was visiting Little Rock, Arkansas to celebrate a memorable weekend on their daughter’s seventh birthday became the victims of a violent attack.

The families’ names were not disclosed for safety reasons, but the father said that they planned the out-of-town trip to go to the zoo, a few water parks, and spend quality time with the birthday girl and her sister.

Their day of celebration turned into horror, as the family was packing up their car in a parking garage located in Little Rock’s popular River Market district.

The father was allegedly assaulted from behind by 37-year-old Markevious King, who hit him multiple times and wrestled him to the ground.

He then went after the 25-year-old pregnant mother, who was sitting in the vehicle’s driver’s seat.

King punched the woman in the face, then got the surprise of a lifetime, when she pulled out a gun and shot him.

When police arrived on the scene, they found King on the ground near the car with gunshot wounds to the head and neck.

He was taken to a local hospital and is currently in critical condition, according to the Little Rock Police Department.

While the children were fortunately unharmed during the incident, both the mother and father sustained injuries.

She had several contusions on her head from being punched by King, while the dad was left with a fractured rib.

“A lot of things could’ve happened and we never know what he was really planning or anything, or if he was trying to kidnap our girls or just trying to steal the car or what,” the father said about the scary ordeal.

Amazingly, the couple is not going to let the attack shape their future plans to visit the area.

“We live near Memphis, and this kind of happens to people here all the time,” he told local news outlet KARK.

“So, I mean, it’s not something we are going to let shine down or shadow down on our lives because we do like to travel.”

It’s unclear if the woman possesses a concealed carry permit in Tennessee, but Arkansas’s constitutional carry law allows both resident and non-residents to conceal carry within the state.

As the shooting was clearly in self-defense, the police have not charged the pregnant woman with shooting King.

‘Backpack Hero’s’ Faith Gave Him The Strength To Fend Off Crazed Playground Knifeman

A young man on a pilgrimage of France’s cathedrals became an everyday hero last week when he fought off a man stabbing children in a park.

A Syrian refugee stabbed four children and two adults in an unprovoked attack at a park in the French Alps last Thursday.

31-year-old Abdelmasih Hanoun critically wounded a “3-year-old British girl, a 22-month-old Dutch boy, and two French cousins, aged 2 and 3,” according to the New York Post.

In a video, which captured the attack, Hanoun hopped a low wall into the playground and began slashing the children.

“He jumped [in the playground], started shouting and then went towards the strollers, repeatedly hitting the little ones with a knife,” a witness recalled.

“Mothers were crying, everybody was running,” another noted.

A mother was trying to fend Hanoun off from her child in a stroller, when a 24-year-old devout Catholic only identified as Henri fought him off.

Henri, a philosophy and management student, was backpacking around France’s holy sites in a months-long tour when he was in the right place at the right time.

“All I know is that I was not there by chance. On my journey to the cathedrals I crossed paths with this man and I have acted instinctively. It was unthinkable to do nothing,” Reuters reported.

In the video, Henri can be seen tossing one of his backpacks at Hanoun and pursuing him through the playground.

“We tried to scare him and make clear he could not do what he wanted,” he recalled about the chase.

Henri said that he felt an otherworldly force compel him to protect the children.

“I let myself be guided by providence and the Virgin Mary. I said my adieu. They would decide what would happen,” he remarked.

When Hanoun was arrested, French police said that he was in possession of a “Christian insignia,” and that he reportedly screamed, “In the name of Jesus Christ,” before the attack.

“It is profoundly un-Christian to attack the vulnerable,” Henry said about the act.

“The entire Christian civilization on which our country is built is a knightly message to defend widows and orphans. I think that, on the contrary, something very bad inhabited him.”

Hanoun was taken into police custody on Thursday and is being held on attempted murder charges.

He is reportedly a Syrian national that was given asylum in Sweden a decade ago and had entered France legally.

Hanoun was recently rejected for asylum in the country earlier this month and has gone through a recent divorce.

Henri has been dubbed “le héros au sac a dos,” which translates into “the backpack hero” by the French media.

He met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, who tweeted out his horror over the incident.

“Attack of absolute cowardice this morning in a park in Annecy. Children and an adult are between life and death,” Macron wrote. “The Nation is in shock.”

Henri is shaken by the events, but vowed to try to make something good come out of it.

“I now have all these horrible images in my head. I need to try

and turn that into something positive,” he commented.

Henri plans to continue his walking tour to show his social media followers “how the beauty of the cathedrals can nourish us and help us do the right thing.”