It’s time for my favorite edition of the week!
A stranger with a phone. A kid with a rope. A dad who just kept showing up. Five stories this week, and every one of them is about someone who decided to act.
THE ANGEL AT THE AIRPORT
LaCinda Thackery was boarding a flight out of Los Angeles when she saw a man limping across the tarmac. James Blair, 64, is a Navy veteran who worked as a fuel mechanic at John Wayne Airport since 2006, walking on knees that had given out years ago. He kept working because his income covers his elderly mother’s hospice care.
Thackery didn’t know any of that yet. She filmed him, posted the video to TikTok, and asked if anyone knew who he was. Commenters found him. His boss drove 90 minutes to his house to help him set up a GoFundMe, since Blair has neither a smartphone nor social media. More than 6,000 people gave. The total passed $174,000.
“I believed in God, but I didn’t really believe in God,” Blair said. “But now, with the angel sitting next to you, it’s amazing.”
Source: Good News Network
THE ROPE
Jory Thomas is 14 and spends his afternoons roping a practice dummy outside his grandparents’ place near Greycliff, Montana. On the 4th of July, he heard someone screaming. A raft and paddleboard had struck a bridge pier on the Yellowstone River. Three people made it to shore. A fourth was being swept downriver, clinging to a cooler.
Thomas waded in, lariat in hand, and caught the man around the arm and neck on his first throw. A bystander helped reel them both in.
“My opinion, Jory saved the individual’s life, 100%,” Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg said. “Had Jory not acted, I believe the chances of this individual not making it to shore were very slim.”
Source: Good News Network
DADS SHOW UP
Khari Arnold started taking his daughter Ariah to the library in Atlanta when she was four months old. It became their thing. Then he thought other fathers might want in.
Now dozens of dads bring kids of all ages to weekly library meetups called the Library Dads. Derrick Lampkin has been showing up with his sons Dominique and Tristan for a year, and recently started bringing his baby daughter too.
“We continue coming because it shows my boys that dads show up,” Lampkin said. “They’re there, and it’s a good community.”
Source: Good News Network
THE STARE-OFF
Saitoti Petro Lorkuta is a Maasai warrior in northern Tanzania. As a child, he wondered if he’d ever see a lion. Decades of retaliatory killing had driven them out of the rangelands his grandfather described.
Now, at 35, he tracks lions for a living. He’s one of more than 160 Maasai “Warriors for Wildlife,” using GPS collars and old bushcraft to help herders and lions share the same land. When he meets a lion in the bush, he doesn’t reach for a spear. He stares it down until it moves on.
“There came a time when the lions were disappearing. I thought my children would only ever see them in books,” Lorkuta said. Lion killings in the region have fallen 90% over 20 years under similar programs. Numbers have grown sevenfold.
Source: Positive News
LEARNING TO SEE AGAIN
The EU has approved a new eye implant for people losing their central vision to age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss after 50. The device uses hundreds of pixels to convert light beamed from a pair of glasses into signals the retina can read, including a zoom feature for small text.
In clinical trials, 80% of patients regained meaningful vision.
“Blind patients are actually able to have meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before,” said Mahi Muqit, a vitreoretinal consultant at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital, which led the UK arm of the trial.
Source: Positive News
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789
