Join the residents of Tucson as they mobilize to protect their neighboring community, the Saguaro Wilderness. Located just outside the city, Saguaro National Park and its Sonoran Desert have become a source of pride for Tucsonans and is a celebrated part of the city's collective identity. As this fragile ecosystem becomes ever more endangered, the people of Tucson come together and rally around their role as stewards of this backyard wilderness.

The news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, but not all is lost. While your favorite athlete was thanking his ex-girlfriend for boosting his draft stock by refusing to take the stand, an everyday hero was at work.

• Claire and Chloe

Our story begins in Trenton, Illinois. Chloe Gruenke was running at the middle school state track meet when she got hurt. On the ground and unsure of her injury, she was emotionally crushed as she began to realize that she wouldn't be able to finish. Luckily, a hero was there and didn't just help her with her injury, but helped her finish the race. The surprising part is how it was done. Unless you saw the image posted above. You can probably give a pretty good guess if you did.

Chloe Gruenke was running the 800 meter race in the Illinois state track meet when felt a sharp pain in her leg and wondered what had happened. She tried to run through the pain until realizing it was too strong, then fell down on the track. This is where her twin sister, Claire, comes in. I should mention that many people already have difficulty telling twins apart and that naming twins Claire and Chloe definitely won't cause even more confusion for everyone else throughout the entirety of your daughters' lives, so a big thanks to mom and dad.

Claire was running the race as well, but stopped mid-race to help her sister. When Chloe explained that she wouldn't be able to finish the race, Claire picked her up and finished the race with her sister on her back. Amazingly, they still finished in first place* in the most unorthodox finish since Ricky Bobby's heyday.

In summary, Claire is a hero. While she wasn't putting herself in mortal danger like America's most selfless hero, she gave up her only chance this year at winning state so that her sister could just finish. It will be 364 more days until she is able to try again at the finals, but to her it was all worth it. Claire and Chloe amazingly weren't the only winners that day, as everyone in the crowd witnessed an inspiring act of love and companionship that is certain to inspire them in their own lives or something.

You can read the original story here. The story contains a video that automatically starts.

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

*Just kidding. They finished last.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite politician was busy mourning the mysterious death of the investigative journalist who was about to publish a damning exposé, everyday heroes were at work.

• Bud May and the Wicker Family

Our story begins in Roscoe, Illinois. Kylie Wicker was born without fingers on her left hand and her parents' benevolent insurance company only offered to pay for one prosthetic in her lifetime. Her parents had a heartbreaking decision to make: let her live with fingers now and lose them later, or wait until she is an adult so that her fingers would last beyond the next growth spurt. Being without any positive choices, they decided to wait until Kylie was done growing to get the prosthetic. Instead of the natural response, homicidal rage, her parents took to the internet to find out what other families were doing. Her parents found that 3-D printing could now print prosthetic limbs, but that the costs were still astronomical. They emailed local schools to ask if their students could take on the project. The first two schools declined.

Enter the engineering graphics class at Boylan Catholic High School. The class' teacher, Bud May, accepted the challenge and met Kylie's parents to iron out details. The final product would be challenging: approximately 30 pieces that had to be responsive, durable, movable, and mimic the human hand. It would need to be significantly better than previous bionic hands. Bud and 10 students jumped at the challenge and got to work. While many of us spent our technology classes dying of dysentery and watching our oxen drown, this class was making Kylie's life unimaginably better.

For roughly $5, or less than many people pay every morning to an internationally traded, 21,000 store corporation doing business in 64 countries and charging you airport prices for banana bread while often killing business for local cafés (As long as the money doesn't go to McDonald's! Grrrr!), this class built a prosthetic hand for Kylie. The hand has been successful and Kylie is now enjoying playing with dolls and riding her bike. Some may ask why the lazy class printed a hand instead of a vital organ for someone in need, the answer is simple: common core is at fault.

In summary, Bud and his students are heroes: they made Kylie's life unimaginably better, saved her family tens of thousands of dollars, and showed others how cheaply and easily this can be done. Despite everything given to her, Kylie was not the only winner in this story. Bud and his class will forever know that they helped give Kylie a normal childhood and have this amazing experience to springboard them into adulthood or something.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite businessman was discovering that having a biracial girlfriend and owning a basketball team isn't really a great idea if you're a married racist man, an everyday hero was at work.

• Christy Harding

Our story begins in Jacksonville, Florida, where the water is warm enough to go ocean kayaking in the dead of winter when a hurricane hits further down the coast and the waves are gigantic. Or so I've heard. A two-year-old girl named Ashley was diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease and needed a new kidney to survive, so her mom posted a facebook ad looking for a donor.

This week's hero is Christy. Christy was at her job, EARNING $$$$$$ ONLINE WITHOUT LEAVING HOME! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!, when she saw the facebook ad looking for someone with Type-0 blood. Christy jumped on the opportunity, knowing that she had been blessed with Type-0 blood instead of being one of those AB-negative scumbags. In one fell swoop she heroically clicked on the ad, read through it a little bit, checked around online to make sure it wasn't a scam, researched Ashley's disease and then found a summary in plain English, then contacted Ashley's mother. Christy had never met Ashley or her mother and they weren't distantly related. She had never known they existed until seeing the facebook post. After the initial email, the details were quickly arranged and Christy went from Florida to Minnesota on Monday to meet the family and perform medical tests. The surgery has yet to take place, but the tests so far have been positive and everyone involved is still preparing for the surgery to happen.

In summary, Christy is a hero. She drove sorta across the country to donate her kidney to someone she's never met, expecting nothing in return. As to her motivation, Christy had a young daughter too and feels that her daughter inspired her decision. She explained, "I can't imagine waiting for that phone call for someone to say, 'Yes. Someone has made the decision to save your daughter's life.'" While Ashley is expected to recover from a potentially fatal disease, she isn't the only daughter to be greatly blessed this week. With the newfound strength and courage of her mother inspiring her, Christy's daughter too will grow to be stronger than any challenge she will ever face or something.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite actress was caught on film belittling a young girl with cancer for asking for her autograph, or as her publicist puts it, "No comment," everyday heroes were at work.

• Ghader Ghalamerev

Our story begins in Östersund, Sweden. Ghader Ghalamere, a Kurdish Iranian married to a Swedish resident, was facing deportation to Iran due to bureaucratic red tape. Even though he was recognized by the UN as a refugee and was on a legal path to Swedish citizenship through marriage, Ghader had to leave Sweden to finish paperwork due to initially arriving without documentation. While the Persian people are vibrant and welcoming, the Kurds have a less than warm relationship with Tehran. More on that in a minute. When the flight was about to leave the runway, the passengers found a brilliantly simple way to ground the airplane. The flight never launched, and Ghader was saved.

Since the Kurds have never attacked us or been on the receiving end of abuses at the hands of the U.S., many people on both sides of the American political spectrum tend to ignore them. The plight of the Kurdish people is an impossible complicated subject that one could get a PhD in and still barely understand, so here's a perfect explanation of Kurdish relationships with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey: After the Ottoman Empire was on the losing end of WWI, it was renamed Turkey, just to rub their noses in it. Its territory was then arbitrarily split into new countries without regard to culture, ethnicity, or religion, creating fun and exciting new conflicts! The Kurds got split up primarily into southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran, despite not being ethnically Turkish, Arab, or Persian. They've at times been forbidden from speaking their home language in Turkey, attacked with chemical weapons in Iraq, and have faced ongoing persecution in Iran. Ghader was allegedly a member of a Kurdish separatist movement in Iran. Needless to say, Ghader was not looking forward to returning to the area.

When his deportation flight was about to take off, the other passengers took action the only way they knew how: they listened to Disney Channel protest music and threw overpriced bumper stickers on their cars, raising awareness so that someone else could take care of the problem. Just kidding, they aren't Californians. When the flight was about to take off, the passengers simple refused to buckle their seat belts. That's all. Because the passengers weren't buckled up, the plane couldn't launch and his deportation was delayed. After the delay, more protests got him a new hearing and now he has been released from detention.

In summary, the passengers were true heroes: They refused to buckle up. That's it. It was simple, yet effective. At this point I am just throwing in extra phrases because I feel like the summary should be longer. No elaborate scheme here. No dangeresque escapes. Thanks to their efforts, Ghader was not deported to Iran, potentially saving him from persecution and separation from his family or something.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its latest stamp featuring the first openly gay elected official in the United States, Harvey Milk. The forever stamp will feature Daniel Nicoletta's photo of Milk in front his camera store in San Francisco, and the colors of the gay pride flag in a vertical strip on the top left corner. The stamp will be available for purchase on (his Birthday) Harvey Milk Day, May 22.

• U.S. Post Office
• The Harvey Milk Stamp goes on sale on May 22.

In honor of the commemorative stamp and Harvey Milk Day, The Milk Foundation and the Tucson LGBT Freedom Day Parade Committee are hosting Tucson's inaugural Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast from 8 to 11 a.m. Wednesday, May 14, at the Hotel Tucson City Center InnSuites Conference Suite Resort, 475 N. Granada. The key note speaker will be Harvey's nephew and Co-Founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, Stuart Milk.

Click here to RSVP and here to pre-order the stamp.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite athlete spent the weekend injecting more steroids than you could pay for with a year's salary, or as his publicist says, "living in the gym, for the team and for the fans," an everyday hero was at work.

• Bode Beirdneau

Our story begins in Lake Tahoe, California Republic. Again. A young man and his father reportedly went on a trip to the "snow," a weather phenomenon from traditional Scandinavian folklore where frozen water particles blanket the earth. Although a handful of Tucson locals say they have personally seen snow in the mountains in the dead of winter, others tell the same tall tales about sasquatch and the chupacabra. Bode Beirdneau and his father were spending time together riding "snowmobiles," a science-fiction transportation device similar to Santa's sled or luck dragons.

Unfortunately, the trip took a turn for the worse. After crashing his snowmobile and sustaining serious injuries, JT Bierdneau realized that riding miles into the wilderness without a map, emergency signal, radio, or phone reception was not his best idea. His nine-year-old son determined that his time window to act would be short in the severe weather and decided to ride out on his own to look for help, with no map and limited directions. He ultimately found another rider with an emergency radio and was able to direct rescue personnel to his father before the situation worsened.

In summary, Bode is a true hero: he went alone into the frozen wilderness, ignored everything taught to him by approaching a total stranger alone for help, then led the rescuers through the wilderness and/or followed his snowmobile tracks back to his father. Thanks to Bode's efforts, his father is expected to make a full recovery. I'm also obligated to add that Bode was happy that he was still able to finish his homework assignments, as that's adorable and makes us simultaneously reflect on the youthful innocence of the hero while putting his remarkable act into the perspective of an unassuming child thrust into a colossal situation or something.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite politician was at the office shredding incriminating documents into the wee hours of the morning, or as his publicist says, "working late to serve you, his constituents," everyday heroes were at work.

Though Tucson certainly has its own amazing stories of heroics, our story again begins in California. Boys ditch school, investigate smoke, save old woman and her dog from a house fire and then return to school like nothing happened. It's a bit more complex than your average Buzzfeed read.

Garen, Peter, and Kirill left school early to stick it to the man by declining to fully participate in a free education designed to give them marketable employment skills. While out of class, this week’s heroes noticed smoke coming from a building and immediately stopped whatever responsible activity they were engaged in to check out the smoke. When they found the source of the smoke, they found a house with seasonal decorations which featured flames and exploding oxygen tanks.

They rushed to the first person they saw, who told them that there was a 94-year-old woman still inside. After trying to enter through the front door but being unable to push through the smoke, they ran to the back yard and unsuccessfully tried to put the fire out with a garden hose. Then they tried the back door to no avail. Once they realized that there were no options for putting out the fire or going around the billowing smoke, they opened the door, ducked down, and hoped for the best.

Miraculously, they were able to pull the woman and her dog from the house safely, as well as making it out alive themselves. As they pulled the distressed damsel from the house, she addressed her situation modestly by yelling “I’m on fire!” She was later treated at a San Francisco hospital and has since recovered.

After the rescue, the boys returned to class like nothing had happened because, hey, why wouldn't they? After learning of their heroic feat, their principal called them to his office... and rewarded them with four hours of mandated community service.

We are introducing a new blogger to the Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch. Jason P. will write about heroes at large and their selfless acts. — Irene Messina, assistant editor

While the news is usually focused on hate, corruption, and crime, not all is lost. While your favorite actor was performing court-ordered community service as part of his plea deal, or as his publicist says, "honorably giving back to his community," an everyday hero was at work.

Our story begins in San Francisco, California Republic. It's really a pretty ordinary story. Man loves woman, woman loves child, child loves dog, dog runs away, man finds dog, a happy montage plays, and everyone lives happily ever after. What makes this story unique is how the dog was found. (Read to the end for the biggest surprise.)

Taking influence from his modern San Francisco community, as evidenced by its modern streetcar, Bryan Mason modernized his search. Bryan made a Facebook page for Sparky, marketed it very aggressively, then recruited people to pass out 7,500 missing dog cards around town. After 10 days, someone found Sparky and he was reunited with his family. Bryan spent countless hours and roughly $1,000 to find the dog, but to his fiancee and her son, it was money well spent. A $4 leash would have been money better spent, but an ounce of prevention is for losers or something. While the story of Sparky's rescue is certainly unusual, I wish to detail three specific acts of heroism.

The first, obviously, was his search for the dog. Obsessive and expensive, he gave it his all.

The second, his relationship status. Is it especially meaningful that he did this for a girl? No. What inspires is his fete of putting in that much time and effort to help out... without getting put in the friend zone. I understand that the idea of the friend zone is based on the flawed concept of "kind act + attractive girl = romance," as if a woman owes a relationship to everyone who treats her like a human being, but it's still refreshing to see a girl end up with the right guy.

Last, but certainly not least, comes a reserve method that he prepared for but never used. Bryan bottled more than six gallons of his own diluted urine so that he could spray it all over town and make a scent trail. A dog tracker (yes, they exist) told him to collect "a bunch of urine from someone Sparky knows well, dilute it, and create a trail to a safe place." You're living for all of us Bryan!

In summary, Bryan is a true hero: he spent a lot of time and money on a good cause, successfully navigated the waters of committing a genuinely selfless act without getting friend-zoned, and got the green light to spray six gallons of his own piss around a major city. I hope that Sarah McLachlan is taking notes, because this rescue story is way more fun than having my entire weekend ruined in two minutes.

Read the original story here

Until next week, may all your dreams come true.

)

Dreams do come true. After all theses years, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger finally has his own tank. The Terminator wants you to destroy obscure fixtures with him to raise money for charity. Click here and donate a minimum of $10 for a chance to spend a day smoking cigars and demolishing things with Arnold. Grand prize includes flight to L.A. and hotel for two. The more money you pledge the more chances and incentives you get, and the proceeds goes to After-School All-Stars.

I feel like a limited edition Conan the Barbarian Sword signed by Arnold is a pretty good consolation prize. The contest ends on 3/14, so don't wait.