In his 10 years as a mentor and tutor, Kenny Thompson has always done his best to meet the needs of the students in his life. That's exactly what he did when he heard last week that dozens of Utah students, whose accounts were delinquent, had their lunches taken and thrown away.
It was in 1984 that John Jacko Garrett, age 70, first began donating a portion of his harvest each year to charity. Today, the second-generation rice farmer from Danbury, a tiny farm town of 1,700 southeast of Houston, is a legend. He's a legend thanks to the almost six million pounds of rice he's donated to the Houston Foodbank, and the millions upon millions of free meals created from that rice.
William Berkshire lost his home and everything in it after his travel trailer went up in flames outside of Roy's General Store in Traverse City, Michigan. The store's manager felt so bad for the now homeless guy known as Mountain Man, he gave him a rarely used camper trailer so he would have somewhere to live. Hentschel posted the news on the store's Facebook Page and asked others to help too. Within two days, Mountain Man had clothes, bedding and boots and dishes. American Waste also donated a dumpster for him to use as he cleans up the rubble.
Audette Exel lives a double life, advising companies on mergers but also providing health care and education for people in two impoverished nations.
Every Friday afternoon one extraordinary teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children they'd like to sit beside the following week. The children know that these private requests may not be honored. After the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
For years, Tinney Davidson has nestled into a chair every morning in her sunny front window and waved to the high school teenagers as they walked to school -- and she would resume her energetic waving in the afternoon, on their walk home, bringing a smile to their lips even on their worst days. On Valentines Day last Friday, the 84 year-old woman in Comax, British Columbia received the surprise of her life when students escorted her to a school assembly organized with the sole goal of thanking her for her years of friendliness.
The owner of Fox's Pizza, Tom Wynkoop, who earned media attention in early January after he volunteered to deliver their medicines to any homebound residents during an extreme snow storm in Pennsylvania, received many donations in the mail from strangers who heard about the gesture. Wynkoop thought about positive avenues in which to distribute the money, and he chose the local Meals on Wheels program, which delivers hot meals to shut-ins. He then matched the donations, doubling the amount of the check to $2,000.
Ben Simon, a senior at the University of Maryland happened to be in the cafeteria around closing time and saw the amount of food being dumped in the trash. He asked if he and his friends could donate the leftovers, and they said, Sure. That was his first food delivery, in September 2011. Thus began the Food Recovery Network, which has diverted 271,000 meals to churches and shelters that feed hungry people.
While most of us want the nicest clothes or the biggest TV for the holidays, there are a lot of people who just need the basics like food and clothing. So, instead of shopping for people who already have a lot... the anonymous man decided to spend his money shopping for people who don't have much at all.
A Wisconsin couple on vacation huddled together for days eating what food they'd brought in the car after they became trapped in deep snow on a closed pass near Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. Fearing her life might be over, Kris Wathke used notebook paper stowed in her purse to write letters to all her loved ones telling them how much they meant to her.
A Connecticut man bought a large desk on Craigslist. Luckily it was too big to fit through the door by a fraction of an inch, according to Rabbi Noah Muroff. He and his wife took the desk apart and found a huge pile of cash hidden in a plastic bag behind the deep file drawers. But that is not the end of the story.
Charles Keller of Phoenix, Ariz., is such a massive fan of the 1960s Batman TV show, that he has an exact working replica of the Batmobile and the Bat-cave. Best of all, he turned his hobby into an opportunity to help kids with cancer.