Posts Tagged ‘family’
Nanny runs barefoot through flames to save 5-year-old boy
A Shelby County nanny is being hailed a hero. 22-year-old Alyson Myatt is at University Hospital, recovering from severe burns after she saved a 5-year-old’s life.
Around 6:20 a.m. on March 23, Myatt was sleeping in a downstairs bedroom at a home on Golden Rod where she is a live-in nanny for 5-year-old Aiden Hawes, whose father was out of town.
“I just heard a big boom. I thought it was Aiden,” Myatt said.
After hearing the boom, Myatt immediately sprinted upstairs – barefoot. When she got to the hallway, she was met by flames on the carpet.
“I was calling him. He said, ‘Aly, I’m in here. I’m in my room underneath my covers.’ I was like okay and I ran there, grabbed him and ran out,” said Myatt.
Myatt said her focus was rescuing Aiden. At the time, she didn’t even think about getting burned.
“After I ran off the carpet, my feet were just … it was like I was walking on goo ’cause all the skin. My feet were just burned off,” Myatt described.
Myatt then ran out of the house with Aiden, drove to a neighbor’s house to call 911. Although Myatt suffered burns to her hands, legs and feet, she said Aiden was not injured.
“I’m just happy Aiden is okay,” said Myatt. “I care for that kid a lot.”
“The boy, probably, without her wouldn’t have been able to survive until we arrived,” said Chief Willard Tucker of the Shelbyville Fire Department.
Tucker believes Myatt ran through 400 degree flames to reach and rescue Aiden, something he believes a lot of people would not have done.
SOURCE: Nanny runs barefoot through flames to save 5-year-old boy
Woman Opening Up Food Bank for Pets [VIDEO]
We have all heard of food banks and the impact they make on our community, but how about a pantry for pets?
It is the idea of Newberry’s Star Chappell, who within the last year learned about the special gift of owning
an animal.
“He’s truly changed my life, I mean he opened up my heart. I just never had to care for something that needed me that much,” said Chappell of her cat Trainor.
Last year Chappell was going through a very difficult time in her life when she found an abandoned and very sick outside her restaurant.
She took him to a vet, where he needed a blood transfusion and lots of tender loving care.
The cat’s name is Trainor and he’s all better now.
For as much as the animal needed a friend, Chappell did too.
Watch this story: Midlands Woman Opening Up Food Bank for Pets
Facebook reunites mother with long-lost son
A woman whose three-year-old son was abducted and taken to live in Hungary has been reunited with him 27 years later after finding his name on Facebook.
Avril Grube last saw Gavin when his father took him on an outing to Blackpool Zoo. That was in 1982.
Instead of going to the zoo, however, Joseph Paros took the boy to Budapest in defiance of a court order.
Despite appeals via the Hungarian Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Budapest, and an appeal to Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, Mrs Grube heard nothing more of her son.
Then last October, her sister, Beryl Wilson, typed the name Gavin Paros into Google and found a link to someone of that name on the social networking site Facebook.
A frustrating wait followed. With more than 200 million users, there was a possibility that the Facebook member merely shared the name with Mrs Grube’s son.
It was several weeks before Mr Paros, now a 30-year-old father of three, checked his Facebook page and found the message from his aunt. Mother and son were reunited at 4am on Thursday after her husband Jeff picked him up from Gatwick and drove him to their home in Poole, Dorset. Mrs Grube, 61, who is partially disabled after a stroke, said: “I couldn’t sleep, I just sat waiting for him to arrive. Even though it has been nearly 30 years, when I first saw him I recognised him. He has my eyes.
“I was so overcome and just said ‘my beautiful son’ over and over again. He was very quiet and overwhelmed. We just hugged each other. It is the happiest day of my life, there are almost no words to describe it.”
The pair managed to communicate, although Mr Paros has forgotten all the English he knew as a boy and Mrs Grube does not speak Hungarian.
Mrs Grube, who has three other children, has yet to meet her daughter-in-law, Sylvia, and three grandchildren Anastasia, 10, Thomas, 7, and Angelina, 6. She hopes they will decide to move to Britain.
Mrs Wilson, 59, had spent the best part of three decades helping her sister trace her son. Because Hungary was a Communist state in 1982 on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain it made the task of tracing a three-year-old boy virtually impossible for a single mother in Liverpool. Appeals for help through official channels fell on deaf ears.
Mrs Wilson, who still lives in Liverpool, said: “Gavin’s father had visitation rights and said he was going to the zoo. Naturally, my sister was devastated. We didn’t have people around us to tell us where to go or who to speak to. We tried our MP and wrote to Margaret Thatcher but nobody was interested or wanted to help.
“Avril endured many sleepless nights, not knowing if Gavin was alive or dead. She didn’t cope very well and had a terrible time. She has a big heart and loves her children very much. As a result her own health has suffered.”
While Mrs Wilson was trying to trace Mr Paros through the internet, he had been trying to find his English family after the death of his father in 2006. Mrs Wilson said: “I tried online electoral rolls to check if Gavin had moved back to Britain, and I tried Friends Reunited, but didn’t get anywhere.
“Then one day last October I put his name into Facebook and found him. I e-mailed him but it took a while for him to respond and when he did he gave me his phone numbers.
“I called my sister when I heard back from Gavin and told her to sit down as I had some news. All I heard after that was screaming.”
Country doctor saves boy with electric drill
Twelve-year-old Nicholas Rossi was lucky to have seen his 13th birthday on Tuesday, after a bicycle accident in a country town left him with bleeding on the brain.
Nicholas’ mother Karen, a nurse, took him to the district hospital when he complained of a headache. There he experienced seizures and lapsed in and out of consciousness. Doctor Rob Carson recognized the symptoms of a brain hemorrhage, realized he had minutes to act and quickly called Melbourne neurosurgeon David Wallace for procedural advice.
With no neurological drills in the district hospital, Dr. Carson had to improvise. Nicholas was anesthetized while Dr. Carson retrieved an electric drill from the maintenance room. He drilled a hole in Nicholas’ skull just below a bruise mark above his ear and a blood clot soon emerged. He then widened the hole to approximately 1cm in diameter with forceps to allow for the insertion of a drainage tube.
An hour after the makeshift surgery that Nicholas’ father Michael likened to a “military operation,” Nicholas was airlifted to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, where he remained under observation until was released yesterday (Tuesday), which also happened to be his 13th birthday.
Sister finds long-lost brother living across the street [Video]
Who’s the guy across the street? Turns out it was Candace Eloph’s brother, who had been given up for adoption 32 years ago.
Jamie Wheat was born at Barksdale Air Force Base’s hospital. His birth mother, Joellen Cottrell, eventually moved from Louisiana and had other children, but did not keep her son a secret.
“My girls always knew that they had a brother,” she said. “I’ve always looked for him.”
Eloph, who is one of those daughters, found her brother by chance.
She had moved into a Shreveport neighborhood, across the street from a couple who had a 32-year-old son. Eight months ago, that 32-year-old son, Jamie Wheat, moved back in with his parents.
He and Eloph became friends — and one day started talking about family.
“We were sitting one day and talking and she said, ‘I had a brother born Jan. 27, 1977, that was adopted,'” Wheat recalled. “I was like — I was adopted. My mom was 16 when she gave me up for adoption.”
Candace called her mother, who drove all night to meet Wheat.
They knew in their hearts he was the son Joellen Cottrell had been looking for, but they wanted confirmation. DNA testing did it.
Wheat was with his families when he opened the letter from the lab. His adoptive parents said they are thrilled about the new stage in their son’s life.
“It was just surprising that they lived across the street from us for two and a half years,” Ted Wheat said. “When they told us, we said this is the greatest news it could be.”
Source: Sis finds long-lost brother living across the street
Awaiting first Mother’s Day after ‘gift from God’
About 12 years ago, Bill and Susan Armbrecht decided to call it quits on trying to have a child.
“We used to avoid going to church on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day because it was too painful,” Bill Armbrecht recalled.
On Sunday, Susan Armbrecht will celebrate her first Mother’s Day. Their daughter, Allie Grace, was born Sept. 28.
“I believe that we wouldn’t have this child if it wasn’t for our faith,” he said. “I truly believe that this baby is a gift from God, the desire of our hearts.”
The Armbrechts had tried for years to conceive. Recalling the fertility treatments, she said, “Bill had to chase me around the house to give me shots.”
They considered adoption, but the cost proved prohibitive.
“The doctors couldn’t tell us why we couldn’t have children, and we couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t have children,” she said.
One day early last year, she felt a little strange and decided that her symptoms must be menopause-related.
Wanting to rule out pregnancy, she used one of the tests sometimes given to female patients at the Alabama Orthopedic Clinic, where she served as a technician in pain management.
Surprised and unsure when she saw the result, she asked a nurse to interpret it. The nurse said that she was pregnant.
On the way home that day she purchased a greeting card, put the test results in it and placed it in the kitchen where her husband could find it.
“Is this for real?” he asked.
As the months advanced, the Armbrechts read everything they could about pregnancy in older women. That information caused some concern, but they decided against medical tests such as amniocentesis — used to identify potential birth defects and other problems.
Instead, the Armbrechts relied on their faith.
Susan Armbrecht said that she experienced a smooth pregnancy, with no morning sickness and little weight gain.
Allie Grace arrived three weeks early, a situation her father jokingly blames on the excitement of the Alabama-Georgia football game played the previous day.
“She heard all the yelling and screaming and said that she wasn’t going to miss the rest of the season,” said Bill Armbrecht, a Crimson Tide fan and owner of The Brick Pit, a local barbecue restaurant.
Sitting in the living room of their west Mobile home recently, they played with Allie Grace and joked about being simultaneously amazed and sleepy.
Bill Armbrecht said he hopes their experience will encourage other couples who still want children, but fear parenthood is beyond their reach.
Allie Grace’s parents now playfully compete about their daughter’s future: Mom wants her to be a ballet dancer and a cheerleader. Dad wants her to become the first female field goal kicker on scholarship at Alabama.
“What fascinates me the most is that every day I’m holding this little girl, it’s like holding an angel,” he said. “Those blue eyes look up at me and I feel like I’m holding an angel.”
“She wakes up at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and she’s smiling,” Susan Armbrecht said. “You can’t be mad at a baby that’s smiling at you. She’s a good baby. I said if God was going to give me one this late in life, he’s going to give me a good one.”
Read more: Awaiting first Mother’s Day after ‘gift from God’
90-year-old couple does duet [Video]
Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He’ll be 90 in February.
Family of 8 commutes on 1 motorcycle — together!
How does a large family commute anywhere if they have no car and little money?
As this picture proves, there are no problems, only solutions.
What appears to be an entire family of eight have all piled cheerfully on to one motorcycle.
The three children, two men, two women and a baby are clinging to one another tightly, their hair blowing in the breeze – as they are, of course, compounding their danger by riding without helmets.
Their lives appear to be in the hands of one of the men – clad in a dark purple shirt, he is the driver.
His control of the motorbike is compromised by the three children crammed on the saddle in front of him however. One hopes they only have to travel in a straight line, as he will find it very difficult to turn the bike with the three children there.
Of course, the weight he is carrying on the back of the motorbike will not help either.
To go around corners on a motorbike, the driver must lean into the turn. That is always more difficult to do when carrying a passenger – if the passenger does not lean with the bike also, or if they lean too little or too much, the driver could lose control.
Unless you are an experienced rider, that’s difficult enough to manage with one passenger. With seven, it must be just about impossible.
The driver will also find stopping difficult.
Read more and see more pictures: Solved! How a family of eight can travel from A to B… on just TWO wheels
Chihuahua blown away by 70-mph winds reunited with owners
Tinker Bell has been reunited with her owners after a 70-mph gust of wind picked up the six-pound Chihuahua and tossed her out of sight. Dorothy and Lavern Utley credit a pet psychic for guiding them on Monday to a wooded area nearly a mile from where 8-month-old Tinker Bell had been last seen. The brown long-haired dog was dirty and hungry but otherwise OK.
The Utleys, of Rochester, had set up an outdoor display Saturday at a flea market in Waterford Township, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. Tinker Bell was standing on their platform trailer when she was swept away.
Dorothy Utley tells The Detroit News that her cherished pet “just went wild” upon seeing her.
Read more: Blown-away Chihuahua reunited with owners
World’s smallest bodybuilder [Video]
At 2 feet, 9 inches and a mere 19 pounds, Aditya “Romeo” Dev isn’t like other bodybuilders.
The 21-year-old from Punjab, India, weighs as much as the body armor worn by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that hasn’t stopped the little person from becoming a body builder.
Dev told “Good Morning America” today that the most he’s ever lifted is 10 pounds — about half his weight.
“From the very beginning I liked lifting the dumbbells and lifting weights,” he said through a translator. “I used to watch wrestling when I was a small kid and that’s how I got inspired.”
His hard work has paid off — three years ago the Guinness Book of World Records named him the world’s smallest body builder.
When he hit a Crunch gym in New York City, people flocked to him, picking him up for a pose and taking pictures.
And ladies, he’s available.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Dev said, with a shy grin.
Watch this story and see him in action: An Inside Look at the Littlest Bodybuilder
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