Here we are on Friday morning and we’ve got some more wonderful stories to share with you today!
1. Last week, a guy in New Jersey posted a sad video of a Walmart worker named Nola, who’s well past retirement age but he can’t afford to retire yet. So he started a GoFundMe page and surprised her after people donated $110,000. She was surprised and grateful, but said she’d still have to work a little bit longer, because she owes about $170,000 on her house. But then over the weekend, the GoFundMe passed $180,000. So it looks like she WILL be able to retire now.
2. The oldest person in America recently celebrated another birthday. Her name is Bessie Hendricks, and she lives in Lake City, Iowa. She’s now 115 years old and still kickin’.
3. A Chick-fil-A in Florida threw a party for a loyal customer’s 104th birthday last week. They call him Mr. Steve. It’s the sixth party they’ve thrown for him. Until a few years ago, he came in every morning, and did it for more than two decades.
4. Firefighters responded to a Long Island home in New York to rescue a dog. The dog fell into a cesspool and became stranded 12ft under the ground. The rescuers ended up using a rescue tripod and an animal snare to lasso Duke and lift him to safety. “The dog was wet, dirty and afraid but uninjured and was escorted with family members to a local veterinarian for further evaluation,” the Melville Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post.
5. The city of Atlanta just honored a guy named Coy Dumas Jr., who’s been a bus driver for 50 years. He started in 1972 and just hit his 50th anniversary. So they paid tribute by plastering his picture across a city bus. Over the years, they’ve offered promotions and ways to climb the ladder, but he always says no. He loves his job and calls people “the most valuable cargo you can imagine.” He’s driven over two million miles without causing an accident. (Here’s a photo, and tribute video they made.)
6. Last year, a family in France moved 300 miles across the country, then their cat went missing. But now they’ve been reunited 13 months later, after she walked all the way back to their old home. Someone found her nearby last month, and posted photos on Facebook. She was covered in fleas and only weighed about two pounds. She had to stay with a vet for three more weeks to recover, but she’s back home now and doing great.
7. A 14-year-old girl in San Diego named Leanne Fan was recently named America’s Top Young Scientist. She won a $25,000 grant for inventing headphones for kids that use blue-light therapy to treat ear infections. And how’s this for a smart family? Her sister Cara won the same prize in 2019 for a new type of spray-on bandage that treats infections without using antibiotics.
8. A Southwest passenger forgot their phone in the terminal at the Long Beach airport in California. And the plane had already pulled back from the gate, so it was too late to go get it. But a worker on the tarmac helped out by jumping just high enough to hand it to the pilot through an open cockpit window. Southwest posted the video on Twitter.
9. A nine-year-old in Wisconsin named Essence Collier did the Heimlich maneuver on a friend at school this month, and saved their life. They were choking on a Cheeto. She says she saw it in a YouTube video two years ago.
10. A firefighter in central Texas got locked out of his headquarters this month. But luckily, he’d brought his fire safety training dog with him that day, and she opened the door for him. She jumped up and hit the push-bar to open the latch, and a security camera got it on video. (Here’s the footage.)
11. A 24-year-old named Tommy Pasquale is currently walking across the United States to raise money for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. He left New Jersey in September, and hopes to make it to the Pacific Ocean by April. The best news is we’ve actually been making progress with that. This month, the federal government announced the number of homeless vets is down 11% since 2020, and down more than 55% since 2010.
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