CNN Heroes

(CNN) -- War widows, "motel kids" and the working poor are among the many people who have been helped by this year's top 10 CNN Heroes.

The top 10 -- remarkable everyday people changing the world -- were revealed Thursday by CNN's Anderson Cooper. All were nominated by CNN viewers inspired by their hard work and commitment.

Each of the top 10 will receive a $50,000 grant and be honored at "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," a globally broadcast event that airs December 11 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.

One of the top 10 will be voted CNN Hero of the Year by the public and receive an additional $250,000.

The live tribute show, hosted by Cooper at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, will culminate in the announcement of the CNN Hero of the Year.


Through December 7, people can vote for their favorite Hero at CNNHeroes.com. They can also vote from mobile devices.

This is the fifth year CNN has conducted its annual search for CNN Heroes. In those five years, the campaign has profiled more than 160 people on CNN and CNN.com. And there have been roughly 40,000 nominations received from more than 100 countries.

Here are the top 10 Heroes of 2011, in alphabetical order:

Eddie Canales
Eddie Canales' son was paralyzed during a high school football game in 2001. Today, Canales' nonprofit, Gridiron Heroes, provides emotional and financial support to high school football players who've sustained life-changing spinal cord injuries.

Taryn Davis
Taryn Davis was just 21 when her husband, an Army corporal, was killed in Iraq. In 2007, she created the American Widow Project. To date, her nonprofit has provided a community of support to nearly 800 young military widows.

Sal Dimiceli
Sal Dimiceli has spent decades helping people get back on their feet. Through a local newspaper column and his nonprofit, The Time Is Now To Help, Dimiceli assists about 500 people a year with food, rent, utilities and other necessities.

Elena Durón Miranda
Elena Durón Miranda once witnessed children eating and collecting items from a trash dump in Bariloche, Argentina. Today, her nonprofit, PETISOS, helps keep about 200 children out of the dump and enrolled in school.

Derreck Kayongo
Derreck Kayongo's Global Soap Project collects partially used hotel soap and reprocesses it to save lives. Since 2009, the Atlanta-based nonprofit has provided more than 100,000 bars of soap for communities in nine countries.

Diane Latiker
Surrounded by gang violence in her Chicago neighborhood, Diane Latiker opened her home to area youth and started a community program called Kids Off the Block. Today, she has turned the building next door into a safe place for more than 300 young people.

Robin Lim
Robin Lim became a midwife after her sister died from complications during pregnancy. Since 2003, she and her team in Indonesia have helped thousands of low-income women have a healthy pregnancies and births.

Patrice Millet
After being stricken with cancer, Patrice Millet dedicated his life to helping children in his native Haiti. His nonprofit youth soccer program provides free equipment, coaching and food to hundreds of participants from the slums and teaches them to become responsible citizens.

Bruno Serato
Since 2005, chef Bruno Serato has been serving free pasta dinners to children, many of whom are poor and live in motels with their families. Today, Serato provides dinner seven days a week to nearly 200 children at the Boys & Girls Club in Anaheim, California.

Amy Stokes
Amy Stokes is redefining "family" for South African children affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty. Her organization, Infinite Family, has connected almost 300 teenage "Net Buddies" with nearly 200 volunteer mentors from all over the world via the Internet.

Read more on CNN online!

BYE BYE Don't Ask Don't Tell!

After years of debate and months of final preparations, the military can no longer prevent gays from serving openly in its ranks.

Repeal of a 1993 law that allowed gays to serve only so long as they kept their sexual orientation private took effect Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT.
Some in Congress still oppose the change, but top Pentagon leaders have certified that it will not undermine the military's ability to recruit or to fight wars.

The Army was distributing a business-as-usual statement Tuesday saying simply, "The law is repealed," and reminding soldiers to treat each other fairly.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, scheduled a Pentagon news conference to field questions about the repeal. And a bipartisan group of congressional supporters of allowing openly gay service planned a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Gay advocacy groups planned a series of celebrations across the country.
At a San Diego bar, current and former troops danced and counted down to midnight. "You are all heroes," Sean Sala, a former Navy operations specialist, said. "The days of your faces being blacked out on the news - no more."
In Iraq, a spokesman for U.S forces put out a statement Tuesday morning noting that all troops there had been trained for the change.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said Monday that the military is adequately prepared for the end of the current policy, commonly known as "don't ask, don't tell," under which gays can serve as long as they don't openly acknowledge their sexual orientation and commanders are not allowed to ask.
"No one should be left with the impression that we are unprepared. We are prepared for repeal," Little said.

Last week, the Pentagon said 97 percent of the military has undergone training in the new law.

For weeks the military services have accepted applications from openly gay recruits, while waiting for repeal to take effect before processing the applications.

With the lifting of the ban, the Defense Department will publish revised regulations to reflect the new law allowing gays to serve openly. The revisions, such as eliminating references to banned homosexual service, are in line with policy guidance that was issued by top Pentagon officials in January, after Obama signed the legislation that did away with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The lifting of the 18-year-old ban also brings a halt to all pending investigations, discharges and other administrative proceedings that were begun under the Clinton-era law.

Existing standards of personal conduct, such as those pertaining to public displays of affection, will continue regardless of sexual orientation.
There also will be no immediate changes to eligibility standards for military benefits. All service members already are entitled to certain benefits and entitlements, such as designating a partner as one's life insurance beneficiary or as designated caregiver in the Wounded Warrior program.

Gay marriage is one of the thornier issues. An initial move by the Navy earlier this year to train chaplains about same-sex civil unions in states where they are legal was halted after more than five dozen lawmakers objected. The Pentagon is reviewing the issue.

Service members who were discharged under the "don't ask, don't tell" law will be allowed to re-enlist, but their applications will not be given priority over those of any others with prior military experience who are seeking to re-enlist.
Some in Congress remain opposed to repeal, arguing that it may undermine order and discipline.

A leading advocate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said Monday the repeal is overdue.

"Our nation will finally close the door on a fundamental unfairness for gays and lesbians, and indeed affirm equality for all Americans," the California Democrat said.

(coutesy of Huffington Post)

Dog Reunites With Owner (couldn't resist)!

Man & Son Save a Fawn in Middle of Bay

Dave Falkenburg didn’t catch any fish in Michigan’s Wild Foul Bay on a recent excursion, but he’s happy with what he says he did grab from the water: A 65-pound fawn.

Falkenburg and his 13-year-old son, Justin, say video taken with the boy’s cell phone shows them rescuing the juvenile deer well away from shore on Sunday. They say they found it while driving their motorboat in the water about 45 miles northeast of Saginaw.

“My son thought it was a seagull or something,” Falkenburg told CNN of the moment they saw something bobbing in the water. “And I said no, I think it’s a deer.”

Falkenburg told CNN affiliate WNEM that it appeared the fawn was struggling to survive. The video, which the pair posted to YouTube, shows the boat approaching the water-treading fawn, and then Falkenburg grabbing the animal by the neck with the intention of keeping its head above water.

“We both decided that we needed to act, and needed to act fast,” Falkenburg, of Caseville, told CNN.

After Justin drove for a while with his dad holding the deer’s head, Dave Falkenburg eventually put the deer into the boat.

Thirty-five minutes after they found the animal, they were close enough to shore to put it into shallow water. Video shows the fawn walking toward land.

Falkenburg said deer regularly swim from a peninsula out to an island.

Mary Detloff, spokeswoman for the state Department of Natural Resources, said no DNR personnel were involved. She said she had no reason to doubt the story.

“I wouldn’t put it past the people of Michigan trying to save a deer,” she said.

Falkenburg said it didn’t matter to him that he didn’t catch any fish on the trip.

"We caught the best catch of the day," he said.

An Oldie But A Goodie!

I HAD to post this again because this story moves me to tears every single time I see it...

9/11 Peace Dogs!

A childhood friend of mine (Josh Johnson) gave away peace dogs on 9/11 to anybody who wanted one. "We gave out 72 dogs in the six hours we were open. We met people from all over the neighborhood. It was a great success."

I saw his post on Facebook and just had to pass this good deed along!
Way to go Josh!

Bystanders Pull Motorcycle Driver Trapped Under Burning Car!

(CNN) -- Police in Utah are searching for a group of construction workers, students and bystanders.

But for a good reason.

This group is credited with saving a man's life by working together to lift a burning car and pull a man to safety.

It was a "life-saving move that the Logan Police Department does not want to go unnoticed," said Jeff Curtis, assistant chief of the police department in Logan, Utah.

The incident occurred Monday morning on a street near Utah State University and was captured on video.

Crowd lifts burning car off man Police said the BMW pulled out of a parking lot and in front of Wright. Curtis said the motorcyclist tried to avoid the car, which resulted in him laying the motorcycle down.

After crashing, gas spilled out of the motorcycle and ignited, engulfing both the motorcycle and the front end of the car in flames, Curtis said. The motorcyclist became lodged underneath the burning vehicle.

A video the incident shows several startled bystanders looking under the BMW as flames leap into the air.

The crowd quickly grew to include a man in a suit, construction workers wearing hard hats, a woman in sandals and a young man carrying a backpack.

After one person in the group tried to pick up the blazing car, the crowd joined in and were somehow able to lift the 4,000-pound vehicle.

One of the bystanders drags the fallen motorcyclist's limp body from under the vehicle.

The motorcyclist was identified as 21-year-old Brandon Wright from Logan. He was rushed to a hospital and was in stable condition after surgery Monday evening, Curtis said. The driver of the car was not seriously injured.

Curtis said police are trying to find the people who helped so they can be recognized for their efforts at a city council meeting.

Amazing Story of Man Who Rescues 6 Year Old From Kidnapper

Courtesy of Troy Polamalu's Facebook post....

An unnamed 6-year-old girl in Albuquerque went over to her neighbors' home to pick up a pack of tostadas. That's when a man grabbed her, put his hand over her mouth, and shoved her into a blue minivan. Neighbor Antonio Diaz was only 15 feet away...

He'd left work early that day to spend some family time. But their washing machine had broken down, so he and his wife Martha had gone to her mother's house just a few blocks away to wash clothes.

They were unloading laundry from their truck when they heard someone yell that a girl was being abducted. Diaz turned around to find a man shoving in a little girl into a blue minivan.

As the driver drove off, Diaz jumped in his own truck and gave chase. He dropped Martha off at the office of a mobile home park to call police, then continued to chase 29-year-old Phillip Garcia for several miles until the kidnapper crashed his van into a light pole.

Garcia fled on foot. That allowed Diaz to jump from his truck, grab the little girl and take her to safety.

But Garcia soon returned to try to escape in his van. He was captured after he became stuck in a Mesa not far away.

The little girl is safe and sound. So are Antonio and Martha, who now say gifts and calls of congratulations are pouring in. People are even offering to make donations to a college fund for the couple's two children.

9/11 'Survivor Tree' Spreads Its Branches Over the World Trade Center Once Again

During this somber week of reflection, here is a 9/11 story with a happy ending!

By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

LOWER MANHATTAN — A tree that just barely survived the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 returned to the World Trade Center site Wednesday as a symbol of renewal.

"It is a testament to our ability to endure," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said as he replanted the now-flourishing callery pear near its onetime home.
The tree’s survival, just like the city’s recovery from the attacks, was not a sure thing nine years ago.

On 9/11, the falling towers crushed the tree’s branches, and the ensuing conflagration scorched its stump.

Workers sifting through the debris did not unearth the charred remnants of the tree until weeks after the attacks, long after they had given up hope of finding anything alive in the rubble.

"In those dark days, we felt we couldn’t disregard any sign of life," Bloomberg said.

The Parks Department brought the 8-foot stump up to the Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and painstakingly coaxed it back to health with fertilizer and careful pruning.

"It looked like a wounded soldier," said Richie Cabo, manager of the nursery. "When I first saw it, I thought it was unlikely it would survive."
By the spring of 2002, though, green shoots poked through the trunk, and Cabo knew the "Survivor Tree" would make it.

"It represents all of us," Cabo said.

The tree faced a major setback last March, when it was uprooted during a storm.

But the tree recovered yet again and grew to a height of 30 feet in time for its return to lower Manhattan.

At Wednesday’s replanting ceremony, Keating Crown, 32, a worker at AON Corporation who escaped from the 100th floor of the South Tower before it collapsed, said the tree would remind visitors to the memorial of the thousands of survivors whose lives were forever changed by the attack.
"It reminds us all of the capacity of the human spirit to persevere," he said.

The Survivor Tree joins over 120 swamp white oak trees already planted at the World Trade Center site. The trees will begin shading visitors next fall, when the 9/11 memorial is scheduled to open to the public for the first time.

School Superintendent Gives Up $800k In Pay

Another story courtesy of my friend, Ed Kosakowsky!

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Some people give back to their community. Then there's Fresno County School Superintendent Larry Powell, who's really giving back. As in $800,000 — what would have been his compensation for the next three years.

Until his term expires in 2015, Powell will run 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for less than a starting California teacher earns.

"How much do we need to keep accumulating?" asks Powell, 63. "There's no reason for me to keep stockpiling money."

Powell's generosity is more than just a gesture in a region with some of the nation's highest rates of unemployment. As he prepares for retirement, he wants to ensure that his pet projects survive California budget cuts. And the man who started his career as a high school civics teacher, who has made anti-bullying his mission, hopes his act of generosity will help restore faith in the government he once taught students to respect.
"A part of me has chaffed at what they did in Bell," Powell said, recalling the corrupt Southern California city officials who secretly boosted their salaries by hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's hard to believe that someone in the public trust would do that to the public. My wife and I asked ourselves 'What can we do that might restore confidence in government?'"

Powell's answer? Ask his board to allow him to return $288,241 in salary and benefits for the next three and a half years of his term. He technically retired, then agreed to be hired back to work for $31,000 a year — $10,000 less than a first-year teacher — and with no benefits.
"I thought it was so very generous on his part," said school board member Sally Tannenbaum. "We get to keep him, but at a much lower rate."
His move was so low-key, his manner so unassuming, that it took four days after the school board meeting for word of his act to get out to the community. There were no press releases or self-congratulatory pats on the back.

"Things like this are what America is all about," said friend Alan Autry, Fresno's former celebrity mayor who played Capt. Bubba Skinner on the TV series "In the Heat of The Night."

"America is as much about overcoming obstacles in difficult times as it is opulence," Autry said. "This reminds me of the great sacrifices made throughout our history, especially the Great Depression."
No one has been more surprised about the positive reaction than Powell, a lifelong educator who didn't realize that what he did was newsworthy. He chuckles at his desk when yet another e-mail arrives from a colleague blown away by his generosity. Two days after word got out he had received 200 messages on his Facebook page.

"When you make good choices, good things happen to you," said Powell, who tends to talk in the kind of uplifting phrases that also make him a sought-after motivational speaker.

He even sees as an asset his childhood contraction of polio, which left him with a limp and a brace, and now a lingering post-polio syndrome.
"It's the most spectacular thing that has happened to me in all my life," he said. "People stepped up to help me be successful."

Powell might credit others, but others say Powell's drive always has come from within. Despite the right leg brace and experimental operations to stop the growth of his healthy leg, he became a champion high school wrestler in Fresno and set a record for one of the most dreaded of all gym class drills — the 20-foot rope climb, which he completed in 1.8 seconds. Today he carries a six handicap in golf.

After moving into school administration he became deputy superintendent, and was appointed to his current job before running for the office in 2006.
The ordained Baptist minister, who serves on the board of a national anti-bullying group that sprang from the Columbine shootings, is so popular he even counts among his friends his contract bargaining nemesis, the former head of the employees' union.

"For a leader to step up to help the budget is phenomenal," said Mike Lepore. "It gives you hope. It gives you the feeling that everything is being done to try to make education work. It's Larry. It really is."
Powell will still earn a six-figure retirement, especially hefty by the standards of California's farming heartland. But because his salary comes out of the district's discretionary budget, for the next three years he'll be able to steer the money he is giving up where he wants: to programs for kindergarten and preschool, the arts and a pet project that steers B and C students into college by teaching them how to take notes and develop strategy skills.

"Our goal has never been to have things," Powell said of himself and his wife, Dot. "We want to give back."

Indiana Linemen Flip Burning Pickup Truck, Save Pregnant Woman!

And yet another story courtesy of Nique Genelle..... thanks Nique (keep 'em comin')...

Linemen spend much of their offseason lifting weights to try and build up as much strength as possible. It's part and parcel of the identity of playing along football's front line. Still, three members of the Forest Park (Ind.) High offensive line took those feats of strength a bit further on Saturday, when they lifted and flipped an overturned, burning pickup truck to save a pregnant woman who was trapped inside.

According to the Dubois County Herald and Forest Park's football booster club website, Anthony Fischer, Austin Kempf and Ethan Knust were entering Rural King, an Indiana chain of farm and home stores, when a car spun out and was involved in a fiery crash.

After traversing a virtual obstacle course just to get to the crash -- the Herald reported that the trio ran through a deep roadside ditch and stomped down a barbed-wire fence just to reach the struggling passengers in the wreck -- the linemen helped the driver out of his trapped seat while flames started to lap against his overturned truck. As soon as he was freed, the driver reached back in to rescue his 3-year-old daughter.

That's when he told the linemen his pregnant wife was trapped inside the truck, and the boys sprang into action. First, the trio got additional help from two other bystanders -- an older man in a back brace and a woman in a military uniform -- and then coordinated a five-man lift to flip the truck over, all while the automobile's engine compartment was lapped by flames.

The group effort overturned the truck in time for the woman to escape without further incident, ensuring that everyone in the accident survived without any significant harm.

All in a day's work for humanitarian linemen in the middle of Indiana. While normal civilians might have considered the near-World's Strongest Man feat an act of heroic intervention, the three football players hardly seemed surprised that they pulled off the feat at all.

"We're football players and I knew we could do it," Fischer told the Herald.
Added Kempf: "We had to flip the truck over. It was just a midsize truck."

Man Dives Into Moving Jeep After Driver Blacks Out

Here is a Good News story courtesy of my friend, Nique Genelle...thanks Nique!


ATLANTA (AP) — A man jumped into an out-of-control Jeep as it drifted across lanes of traffic on a bustling parkway and steered the vehicle safely into a guardrail after its driver suffered a seizure, authorities said.

Christopher Sanders said he blacked out on his way home from work Thursday in Columbus, a west Georgia city. Police later told him his Jeep Cherokee was weaving through fast-moving traffic and had slowed dangerously on a busy parkway before the good Samaritan came to the rescue.

"It's a blessing that he was actually there and did what he did," Sanders told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "The situation could have gone dozens of different ways, but it went the best possible way."

With other cars whizzing past at around 65 mph, the Jeep had slowed to between 10 and 15 mph when help came, according to the account.

Police said 26-year-old Michael Perry had parked his own vehicle and began running after Sanders' Jeep, yanked open the passenger door, climbed in and then guided it into the guardrail.

"He risked his own life in the process," Sanders said in a telephone interview. "He didn't have to do what he did."

Sanders, 27, said he began having seizures about 10 years ago, but never experienced one while driving. He said he's been able to keep them in check, but Thursday's seizure was a violent one. He said doctors aren't certain of the cause, but he says he was shot in the neck during a robbery years ago and thinks that may have helped trigger the seizures.

Sanders said Perry banged up his leg after it got caught between the Jeep and the guardrail, but neither man was seriously harmed.
Columbus police say Perry's actions averted a potential disaster on the busy road and might have saved Sanders' life.

"It could have gone very, very badly," Sgt. Mark Graydon told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. "It was unbelievable. Everything worked right, and it was pretty miraculous."

Sanders and Perry are both from Phenix City, just across the state line in Alabama.