good news

The Daily Positive: Dog Protects Woman from Armed Gang

today

You may have noticed that I rarely talk about animals in all of my good news stories. That’s on purpose.

This story was too good to pass up.

What I read was about a dog who pretty much could sense an impending danger, but his owners were like “he’s barking for no reason; lock him up”. They were in their bedroom when Rocky, the name of the dog, started barking out of control. They put him out.

Then, a gang of thugs came in talking about “where’s the money”? and Kasha and her partner Aryan are all like “What are you talking about?” and I’m thinking “Somebody’s got a secret to tell!”

Anyway, one of the bad guys pulls a knife and holds it to Kasha’s neck. Now, Kasha’s 5 months pregnant. And she mentions this hoping there’s some humanity in these thugs. There was four of them. The other three were beating up Mr. Aryan.

Things were looking bleak until Rocky comes in and scares the thugs off. By the way, Rocky is a Rottweiler. So yeah, he can take you out. Anyway, the thugs ran off and Rocky was all like “Oh no you don’t!” and runs after them. Aryan licks his wounds and follows as well.

From the perspective of Kasha, she finally comes outside to see Aryan and Rocky standing in front of one of the thugs, with Rocky all like “Give me a reason, bro!”

Read what happened to that guy here. Great job, Rocky. I was gonna save this for Fearless Friday next week, but I had to push this out.

Fearless Friday: Man is Attacked by knife-wielding thief; Son retaliates

I love it when good stories happen close by to where I live. Okay, no exactly close, but it sure ain’t far.

A man was attempting to rob somebody using a knife. He (Vazquez) demanded money and actually cut the guy. Next thing you know, the son of the victim pushes Vazquez and Mr. V-man runs off. But, the son isn’t done yet. He then proceeds to take down the license plate number.

Vaquez is in jail now.

The Daily Positive: Metro-North crash passenger helps in aftermath

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After the deadly devastating crash with the Metro-North train, there was plenty of commotion and panic. One man shares his role and observations:

“People started to panic and were starting to run back toward the back of the second car,” Wallace said. “There was a tremendous amount of billowing smoke coming through at that point, we could see people moving, shapes moving around in the smoke, so we wanted very much to get in there to help people.”

Wallace, 44, a former Volunteer Ambulance Corps member, searched for a way off the disabled train, while calming fellow passengers.

James Wallace. Here’s a little something he did:

“I wanted to help people if they were injured, so I went up to the cemetery and found a couple of people there,” he said. “A broken leg and a woman with broken ribs and we were able to hang on until EMS arrived.”

Good job, James.

The Daily Positive: Man Shovels Nearly 20 Driveways for Free

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A young man decided to spend his time shoveling snow for people. He posted on Facebook that he was available to help. In the end, he helped clear out nearly 20 driveways among other things. He did this for free. Very nice of him.

 

The Daily Positive: Teen Raises Money to Buy Man A Car

be a light

Let me first start by saying that the news is awesome that the teen got the money and all of that. But, when you find out why this man needed a new car, you might just lose your mind…and be a little more thankful…

Robertson, 56, begins his day at 8am and doesn’t get home until 4am, after travelling most of his journey to and from work on foot. The factory worker can’t afford a new car on his $10.55 an hour salary, and has been making the massive trek every day for 10 years to keep a perfect attendance record.

Holy crap. He comes home, sleeps for a couple of hours, and does it all over again. Holy crap.

So, Evan Leedy decided to do something about it.

The student’s original goal was to crowdfund $5,000 for bus fare, but it quickly reached enough to purchase a vehicle. I initially set the goal for $5,000 just to get him something, bus fares and taxi rides,” Leedy said. “I went to go get ready and an hour later we had $2,000 donated already. Within four hours we had over $10,000. I bumped it up again and by the end of the day we had over $30,000.”

Soon after, car dealerships offered to give the man a free car. It’s a great story, but I love the quote from Robertson’s boss:

“I set our attendance standard by this man,” Todd Wilson, Robertson’s manager, told The Detroit Free Press. “I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can’t get here – bull!”

Welp!

There’s a fantastic image in the story of Robertson’s daily commute. Take a look at it. Thank God for public transportation!

The Daily Positive: Man Survives Getting Ran Over By Farming Equipment

good every day

 

This piece of news is somewhat gruesome and painful, but it’s worth a read! Our friend, Vander, was doing his usual farm work when:

After tripping over a corn stalk hidden beneath the snow, Vander Zwaag fell backward into a running power take-off, or PTO. The device, which sends power from a tractor into an attached piece of farming equipment, took hold of the farmer’s clothing and pulled him through the mechanism.

The force of spinning gears and rotating parts crushed and bruised much of the left side of Vander Zwaag’s body, before finally spitting him out onto a loosely-packed bed of snow. Having worn multiple layers of clothing in preparation for working in the cold, Vander Zwaag said his apparel wrapped around the PTO’s gears, finally stopping the machine from doing further damage.

Christ. Turns out he was on the ground nude. He couldn’t call for help if only because his cell phone was all messed up. His only chance was to get to his tractor. Here’s the damage:

Dealing with a concussion, a total of eight fractured ribs and vertebrae, a displaced hip, a broken femur, a ruptured spleen and a completely crushed left ankle, he reached out for the step he needed to climb to mount his tractor. Despite a nearly 2-foot gap from the ground, he eventually found himself at the tractor’s helm.

With all of that, he managed to find help. In the end, he seems to be pretty normal.

While he picked up the habit of using his right foot to operate the clutch, nearly everything else has returned to normal. With the help of his family, his faith and his community, Timothy Vander Zwaag only has one word to describe the last year’s series of events: a miracle.

The whole story is quite a read. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose but the quote at the top really goes with this story. Ha!