It took multiple hours and several trucks to bring home all of the cards and mountains of gifts sent to Danny Nickerson from all over the world. The boy, who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor last fall, celebrated his sixth birthday on Friday climbing through bins of packages at the post office.
In the last 14 months, more than a dozen mystery packages have arrived for a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with cancer and, often, for his three siblings and parents. Packages would show up outside their Illinois home, sometimes arriving when the family was inside the house, but never with any trace of the source's identity, other than the signature "Dylan's Secret Pal."
Remember the boy with leukemia who donned a batman suit last month and was treated to a day of 'pretend crime fighting' that involved thousands of participants in San Francisco? (See the original story here.) Now someone has paid for a billboard featuring a picture of the 5-year-old Miles Scott dressed as 'Batkid', to thank him for saving the city.
A stranger in Durham, North Carolina restored the faith in her own parenting abilities that one single mom was feeling on a particularly hard night. The mom, whose kids are often hard to handle in restaurants, received a kind note applauding her patience and parenting skills from a young man at a nearby table. After signing the note, Jake even paid for the family's dinner and included a Pizza Hut Gift Card for the next time they wanted to dine out.
In honor of his mother, a breast cancer survivor, and for Breast Cancer Awareness month, Ryan Marotta bought pink sneakers to wear to school. But, some of his middle school classmates harassed him because he was a boy wearing pink. When his friends found out why he was wearing the shoes, everyone started wearing pink.
All across Canada, police departments have been ticketing kids. But they're not handing out the tickets that incur fines or suspend drivers licenses. Positive Ticket citations are giving teens and children free coupons for pizza and ice cream just for obeying the law and putting safety first.
A heartbreaking story ran in the Tampa Bay Times on October 8 about a brave boy, 15, who stood up in front of a church during Sunday services to ask someone to love him. The orphan had been raised in foster care and lived in a group home for boys. He made the drastic and courageous step because he wanted a loving family so bad. After the story ran, thousands filed requests to ask him to join theirs.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, Kerri Martin decided to change her life, leaving the corporate world to open a bike shop. Now, through her store Second Life Bikes, she's giving neighborhood kids the opportunity to learn the value of hard work by helping them to fix and earn their own bikes.
Something strange is happening at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center. Residents are so eager to get into a Russian literature class led by the University of Virginia that prison officials use it as a reward. The youths are clamoring to read thick books like War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, a moral thinker and non-violent pacifist who was said to have had a profound impact on Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Educators say 80 percent of learning depends on a child's ability to see a blackboard or read a book, but some children in the United States never get the glasses they need, including 40,000 children in Los Angeles alone. Statistics show up to 15 percent of all children in elementary school need glasses. The solution is clear for a group called Vision to Learn. Their bus-clinic provides free eye exams and glasses to students in low-income communities.
Who knew going to the principal's office meant that something good had happened rather than bad?
An 11-year-old boy, who had died in his mother's back seat on the way to the hospital after an asthma attack, was revived on the side of the road after several minutes during which a hair transplant doctor did not give up on resuscitation efforts.
Dozens of children got a big surprise when window washers dressed as Spider-Man descended on the outside of All Children's Hospital in Florida on Thursday.
Mac Gallegos was only 5 when his father, Army Sgt. Justin Gallegos, was killed in Afghanistan in 2009. To celebrate what would have been his 31st birthday, Mac wrote a letter to his father and wanted it to be flown as close to heaven as possible. Thanks to an Air Force pilot, he got his wish.
Young people who are down on their luck in Los Angeles gave thanks yesterday for My Friend's Place, a privately funded center that has become a haven where homeless youth can nurture fragile dreams. It also gives them what food it can afford, and clothes, toiletries and hot showers.
It's hard to pick up your life after the trials of illness – that's where these guys come in, with a super program at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital.
17 years ago, a retired couple in Utah started making handmade wooden toys for poor and sick children. The little cars and trucks were received so enthusiastically in the local hospital, a workshop was set up which has since delivered more than 1.1 million toys to kids around the world. News spread around Cedar City telling of a Happy Factory where retired couples could come to laugh and give their time in a collective effort to make kids happy around the globe.
An expanding body of research suggests people's moral compasses are active far earlier than previously thought. Young children and even babies demonstrate attributes such as generosity, empathy and a sense of justice, indicating that far from being born as clean slates, humans seem to have innate altruistic tendencies and are able to make moral choices at a remarkably young age.
The heart-wrenching exchange between a father whose son died in a car crash and the teenage drunk driver who was behind the wheel left witnesses in a Wyoming courtroom in tears on Monday. The victim's father pleaded with the judge to show leniency.
A teenager who lost his home in Japan's devastating tsunami now knows that one prized possession survived: a football that drifted all the way to Alaska. A man, who has a Japanese wife, found the ball with the youngster's name inscribed on it while beachcombing on an Alaskan island.
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