Everyday Heroes

The media's general focus is the latest celebrity scam or recent speeches from the White House....we all look at the bigger events that are happening....why not take a minute to go over the smaller seemingly insignificant events that happen on a daily basis?
Where has our focus shifted to? The latest fads at the Emmys, Angelina Jolie's relationship with Brad Pitt, and more recently, Mary-Kay Olsen's split with her boyfriend. Who really gives a crap!
We don't see MSN.COM or YAHOO.COM fill their pages with the giving American's all over the country. We don't see the smaller events that occur all the time that make a large impact on our society as a whole.

In Chicago an elderly lady was at an airport when she noticed a man with shiny shoes. She always thought highly of people who wore shiny black shoes. She made a comment to that man. Soon after she found out that her flight was delayed overnight and she would be stuck at the airport unable to afford a hotel room.
The man with the shiny shoes not only gave her dinner, but paid for her stay at a luxury hotel where a limo was waiting for her in the morning to take her back to the airport.

In Michigan, a fellow won a small lottery in the amount of $10,000. While most of us would take the money to buy us something or pay off debt, he donated the entire amount to the local United Way Chapter.

In California, a 5 year-old girl was walking down the street with her parents when she saw a man with a cardboard sign. Feeling compassion for that man she took big steps to help feed the homeless and hungry. Her goal? To raise $1,000 in two months to donate to the local food pantry. Initially she wrote over 150 letters to her family friends requesting soda cans to recycle to help feed the hungry. The response was huge. Soon her class at school was involved and pretty soon she was getting money in the mail from all over the state. In two months she raised over $3,700.00.

In Pennsylvania, a 95 year-old man, a barber for 37 years passed away. Never married with no children, this man spent the majority of his life in his little barber shop giving cuts to men and women. A charismatic and compassionate man, as described by his customers, this man was alawys helping somebody. At the time of his death, the sum of $800,000 a modest savings from this fellow was donated by his request to a local foundation that helped young and old with physicial and developmental disabilities.

It's the smaller acts of kindness that make a biggest difference in our lives. They may not gain a headline in a newspaper or on TV, but will have a huge impact on those around us. Never underestimate the power of kindness in people.