A.1007 | B.1009 | C.2014 | D.2018 |
Reese Osterberg, a 10-year-old girl, is a big fan of the baseball team San Francisco Giants and Little League. When the girl lost her home in Fresno County, California, to one of the largest wildfires in state history early last fall, she had a very pressing concern: Did anyone grab her cherished baseball cards?
Unfortunately, no one had. Her mom recalled that the roaring fire seemed to devour (吞噬) everything in their yard. Danger was definitely around them. With a houseful of kids and dogs and a farm’s worth of horses to evacuate, if they didn’t hurry up, the consequences would be unimaginable. So at the extremely urgent moment, the whole family totally forgot her cards am id the dangerous situation. Naturally, the enthusiastic fan of San Francisco Giants and Little League was upset. When she watched the Giants on TV, she would lay out each player’s card on the floor in his corresponding field position. “I like baseball cards because they are pictures of people doing happy stuf — doing what they love, and what I love”, says Reese.
Reese’s loss deeply touched the hearts of the warmhearted firefighters from Fresno County Fire Department. They decided to do something to help the upset kid. Before long, they posted her story on its Face-book page with a plea to help Reese regain her baseball card collection. The story, in turn, touched the heart of kind Kevin Ashford, a longtime baseball collector, who was more than willing to seize the opportunity to do good.
Ashford knew exactly where Reese could find replacement cards: in his garage. He had more than 25,000 in his collection, with a ball park value of $35,000 to $50,000. Ashford had been thinking about selling them when he happened to read the fire department’s post. “I wasn’t really doing anything with them,” says Ashford. “I thought I could take care of this problem rather quickly.”
Ashford immediately responded to the post.
Reese has gotten so many cards from Ashford and she decided to share these cards with other kids.
Teen Becomes A Local Hero
When Sydney Raley headed into her weekend shift on Saturday, December 18, she likely expected to do more of the same: Stand at the drive-through window, take orders over the headset, and hand each customer their meal with a smile.
In fact. that’s exactly how it started. Sydney Raley has been working at MC Donald’s for about seven months and so far, it’s been her typical after-school job. The day had been mostly normal -making coffee, making drinks, and going into the lunch rush.
But a few hours into her shift. things took a dramatic turn. After handing a customer some of their food, Sydney let them know that more would be coming as soon as it was ready. But just seconds later, she noticed a terrible look of panic spread across the woman’s face. Then came the coughing. She was coughing like crazy and was speechless. Her daughter was in the passenger seat and looked extremely confused and frightened.
Sydney immediately knew she was choking. The first aid training Sydney received more than four years ago hit her. Most 15-year-olds might panic at the sight of this. But not Sydney. Instead, the teen remained calm and quickly shouted to both her manager and the woman’s daughter to dial 911. Then, she dove through the drive-through window and came to the rescue.
The teen pushed the driver’s side door forcefully open and got the choking woman to her feet. Then she dug down deep into her memory bank to recall everything she learned from her Red Cross babysitter class-which she’d taken four years earlier. All that training of how to use the Heimlich maneuver(哈姆立克急教法)immediately kicked in. Still, she had never actually had to use the life-saving technique before, and after a few tries, it wasn’t quite working. Luckily, another customer was just a few feet away in the parking lot.