4th Grader Raises Thousands for WWII Vets

Justin Peterson is a 9-year-old with an apparent knack for fundraising.

The Chewelah boy has raised more than $3,689 since late last year to help the region’s Honor Flight program with its mission: sending World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to see their war memorial.

“I’m just really surprised because I didn’t think we’d get this much,” Peterson said. “At first my goal was only $600, but we well cleared that. Now I like $4,000.”

He has persuaded people to donate through public speaking engagements, a letter campaign, a loose-change drive and a taco feed.

Recently, his efforts got a mention on a local radio station, said Tony Lamanna, a Spokane police officer and regional Honor Flight director. That prompted a $1,200 pledge from an anonymous donor.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” said the boy’s mom, Elizabeth Peterson. “We’ve been receiving a couple checks per day from area VFW posts.”

Justin Peterson’s inspiration came after he started interviewing World War II vets for a school project at Gess Elementary School. The fourth-grader has talked to seven or eight vets now, he said.

“One of them, he was a mine sweeper. He blew up mines so his fellow ships could come in,” he said. “That’s one of my favorite stories. I have so many.”

Peterson has raised more by himself than all of Greenacres Middle School in Spokane Valley ($1,400) or all of Willard Elementary School in Spokane ($2,200), Lamanna said.

“We are going to be taking five or six trips this year,” Lamanna said. In all, about 200 veterans will be able to see their memorial.

Justin’s fundraising effort will support six veterans, Lamanna said. “It’s phenomenal.”

-Jody Lawrence-Turner [The Spokesman-Review]

Story Link: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/mar/19/9-year-old-a-fundraising-phenomenon/?print-friendly

Woman Donates Tax Return, Wins Lottery!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Renee Green of Bellevue, Washington, recently donated her tax return to the Haiti relief efforts. What happened to her in return for her good deed? She won the lottery - $50,000 to be exact! Check out the video to learn more!

Meet the "Indiana Jones/Mother Teresa" of the Amazon

Historic Choice - Woman Named H.S. Football Coach

CNN Story Link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/03/11/woman.football.coach/index.html

(CNN) -- A high school in Washington, D.C., on Friday named a former women's professional football player as its head varsity football coach, a move that a national women's sports advocacy group calls historic.

Natalie Randolph, 29, a science teacher at Calvin Coolidge Senior High School, was introduced as the school's head football coach Friday in a press conference.

"We needed to find the best leader, role model, coordinator and instructor for our young men," Coolidge principal Thelma Jarrett said. "Natalie passed our first test -- she's proven herself as a great organizer, a leader who is knowledgeable about the sport as a player and a coach."

Students and faculty, along with Randolph's loved ones and former D.C. Diva teammates were on hand for the announcement as Mayor Adrian Fenty decreed March 12, 2010, "Natalie Randolph Day" in Washington.

Randolph was a wide receiver for the D.C. Divas women's pro football team and a standout sprinter and hurdler at the University of Virginia. She has experience coaching boys, having been an assistant football coach for Washington's H.D. Woodson High School in 2006 and 2007.

But now she's stepping into the head coaching role, extremely rare for women in high school football, though It's not clear how many women have been head coaches for boys' high school football teams.

Randolph said gender would not make a difference in her new role.

"While I am proud to be part of what this all means, being female has nothing to do with it. I love football, I love football. I love teaching. I love these kids," she said Friday.

"My role as head coach is to do all that I can to help these young men, these students, reach their goals. I want to make their families, the school, the city proud of us as a team, not me."

Randolph said she had already sought out some members of her coaching staff.

In a Thursday story about Randolph's hiring, The Washington Post reported that another Washington teacher, Wanda Oates, was named head football coach at a different Washington high school in 1985. But she was removed a day later after coaches who didn't want to coach against her pressured the school district, the Post reported.

Clell Wade Coaches Directory Inc., a company that keeps a database of interscholastic coaches, doesn't keep track of gender, owner Karen Wade-Hutton said.

But Wade-Hutton, whose family has been keeping track of interscholastic sports through the company for 50 years, said that although she's heard of women who were assistant football coaches at high schools, she's "never heard of a female head coach at a high school football team."

The New York-based Women's Sports Foundation "congratulates Natalie Randolph on her historic mark," the group's CEO, Karen Durkin, said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

"Girls and women -- along with their fathers, sons and brothers -- now have clear evidence that the gridiron ceiling can be broken. Natalie's hiring will serve as a much-needed catalyst for women in leadership positions across all sports," Durkin said.

Rich Daniel, the Divas' general manager, said Randolph will win over anyone skeptical about her ability to coach in an almost exclusively male sport. He referenced her assistant position at Woodson, where she worked with wide receivers.

"I know their passing game was one of the best in the league," Daniel said. "She went through some of the same things she'll go through now: Do you know how to coach? Can you play? But you can ask that of males, too. That's not unique to her being a female.

"People will have that initial reaction, but they'll realize she ... really knows what she's talking about."

Randolph's attorney, Lawrence Wilson, said, "I think everybody is pretty excited about it, not just because she's making history, frankly, but I think they're just excited about having Natalie Randolph."

Wilson, who knew Randolph at Virginia, where he also was a track and field athlete, said she is a "soft-spoken teacher -- and I'm sure a coach -- with a swift sword."

"She has a quiet demeanor about her but has no problem getting respect from people," he said.

Giving the Gift of Time - 5 Inspiring Stories

From Real Simple Magazine:http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/gifts-of-time-00000000030604/index.html

Empowering Girls
Jocelyn Allen
Age: 40
Hometown: Farmington Hills, Michigan
Single mother of one son

Whether she’s attending a Detroit Pistons game, strolling through a museum, or playing golf, Jocelyn is hard to miss, what with the 30 tween and teen girls she has in tow. Jocelyn, the vice president of public affairs for OnStar, heads up Divas4Life, an organization for girls between the ages of 8 and 18 that encourages them to become, in her words, “determined, inspired, victorious, and adventurous.”

The idea came to Jocelyn in 2002, while she was volunteering as youth director at St. John Evangelist Temple of Truth, in Detroit’s beleaguered Northend community. A longtime member of the congregation, Jocelyn had witnessed parents struggling to provide the basics for their families. “Detroit’s youth are the ones hardest hit by the problems that plague this city,” she notes. “I have been tremendously blessed, and I felt I could be a good role model for young girls.”

In 2003 Jocelyn started Divas4Life to provide her students with “access to mentors who look like them, have overcome the odds, and are giving back to their communities,” she says. Word spread through the neighborhood, and soon Jocelyn had dozens of girls eager to join.

From that point on, Jocelyn, with the help of her all-volunteer board, has arranged weekly field trips for her girls. One week they might go horseback riding; the next, they might attend a performance of La Bohème. Occasional etiquette lessons and money-management and college-prep courses are offered, as are lunches with successful African-American women. (The costs of Divas events are funded by board members or by donations from local companies.) “With everything we do, I want the girls to learn a lesson,” Jocelyn says. “I don’t want them to sense any limits.”

Since Divas began, more than 75 girls have participated in the program (pictured here, six current members). Many become high achievers; this year’s group boasts honor students, violinists, and sports stars. Shyniece Hardwick, who joined Divas when she was 12, is one such success story. “After my mother left, I had no female to guide me,” says Shyniece, now 21, who was raised by her father. “Divas taught me what’s right, what’s wrong―and it’s why I’m in college today.” Shyniece considers Divas a lifeline, so much so that she now works for Jocelyn as the group’s first intern while completing her senior year at Eastern Michigan University.

No matter how busy Jocelyn is at work or with her son, Michael Davis Jr., 17, she says she never tires of running the organization. “It’s rewarding to be there when the girls need someone to listen to them, to tell them they are worthy,” Jocelyn says. “I may not be able to save the whole world, but I can make an impact on these young women’s lives.”

Copy & paste this link to read about 4 other inspiring stories: http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/gifts-of-time-00000000030604/index.html

Man & Dog Reunited & It Feels So Good

Story from The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/after_two_years_apart_portland.html

The story of the man, his dog and the lost and found began on a spring day two years ago near an open field in Chicago.

Roger Mallette was playing with his black lab, Ike, when his cell phone buzzed. Mallette turned around, took the call and Ike took off.

"It was extremely painful," Mallette said Sunday at his office in Southeast Portland. "I never got over it."

For the longest time, it seemed to Mallette the story would end right there and he'd never see Ike again. It seemed like all he could do was nurse his broken heart and tell friends about the dog that got away. But then, late last year, Mallette got a phone call and the whole story changed.

Mallette, who is 45, found Ike on Craigslist in 2004 when he lived in Seattle. He went to pick him up and found his new friend in a muddy backyard, bounding around, full of energy. This did not bode well.

Ike is a runner. If he's not on a leash, he'll sniff around and take off. Mallette estimates that in their first few months together, Ike ran away five or six times.

But Mallette always managed to find his dog. He gave Ike a rabies tag and had a microchip implanted between Ike's shoulder blades, both of which identified Mallette as his owner.

Together, in early 2007, Ike and Mallette moved to Chicago. It was there, in spring 2008, when Mallette took that fateful cell phone call.

He'd taken Ike off the leash to play ball with him in a grassy lot. One minute, Ike was running around, chasing the ball. The next minute: gone.

Mallette put up fliers and placed an ad on Craigslist. No luck. He eventually gave up, too distraught to get another dog.

In late 2008, Mallette moved to Portland. He owns and operates a company that makes cycling jerseys and he wanted to be in the sport's epicenter.

This is where he met his fiance, Elizabeth Everman. He told her all about Ike.

"I'd heard all these stories about him," said Everman. "Roger, whenever we saw a lab, would almost tear up."

That's where the story stood in early December, 2009.

Then early one morning, when Mallette was asleep, he got a phone call. It was a woman from a dog shelter southwest of Chicago. She had Ike, she said on the voice mail. Call us back.

"I about fell out of bed," Mallette said. "I was in utter disbelief. I was so caught-off-guard I was hoarse. I could barely talk."

Apparently, Ike had run away again and someone in Romeoville, Ill., southwest of Chicago, called the animal control department. An officer came and picked Ike up.

After the microchip and the rabies tag confirmed that Mallette was the owner, Mary Helton gave him a call from the shelter.

"He started crying," Helton recalled.

With help from a friend, Mallette had Ike flown to Portland several days later.

Now when he tells the story about his dog, it has a happy ending.

"I have to say man, it's the coolest thing," Mallette said. "The greatest gift the universe has ever given me."

-- Stephen Beaven

Grace Groner, A University Angel

Lake Forest College received a more than generous gift from a woman whom some are calling “Amazing Grace.” When this 100 year old Lake Forest graduate died in January, she donated her entire estate to the college, totaling $7 million! In the past, Groner donated $180,000 to the school towards a scholarship program which allows at least 1,000 students to get internships and study abroad. In 1935, she bought $60 shares of Abbot Laboratories where she worked as a secretary for 43 years. Over the next 70 years made when the shares split, Grace made investments which allowed her original stock purchase to turn into a huge fortune. Her modest home is donated to the school and will be named “Grace’s Cottage” and used as a place to live for woman who received scholarships. See her amazing tale at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/35722825#35722825.