The groom had asked for her hand. The date was set. And the dress had been purchased. Kelly Cays was just an ordinary bride-to-be with a June wedding planned until something happened that shook up her dreams and restored her belief in human kindness.
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On March 14, Cays of Colorado Springs, Colorado, picked up the wedding dress she’d ordered four months earlier from Danielle’s Bridal Boutique. Here is where the story then deviates from normal into unthinkable territory: Someone stole Cays’s 2006 Jeep Liberty from the parking lot of her apartment complex. But it wasn’t just her wheels that disappeared. So did her wedding dress.
Ten days later, the car turned up abandoned, but the dress was gone. And Cays’s auto insurance didn’t cover the theft.
Relatives had paid for Cays’s $1,800 dress, and she and her fiancé Zach Rose couldn’t afford to replace it. What’s more, they didn’t have four months to wait for a replacement, as their wedding date loomed just three months away. After the Colorado Springs Gazette ran a story on the pilfered dress, people throughout the city stepped up to help.
“So many people offered me their dresses and their stories,” Cays told Stephanie Earls of the Gazette. She still loved her original wedding dress, though, so she contacted the store to see if they could do a rush order. The store agreed, and allowed her to put down only a small deposit, while Cays and Rose hoped they could come up with the rest of the money in time.
They shouldn’t have worried. Sarah Steinmeyer, who works at the dress shop, told Earls that a Good Samaritan came in and anonymously paid for the dress. “It had been a very busy day working on prom when this woman came in and wanted to know if anyone had paid for Kelly Cays’ wedding dress yet. We said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘I’d like to do that,’ and whipped out her checkbook. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “We all want to be able to do that someday, just make someone’s day like that.”
Cays describes the act of generosity as a “breath of angelic awesomeness.” It restored Cays’ belief in the goodness of people. “After my car was stolen, I was thinking people are awful. Then throughout this, so many people have helped me and been really sweet and tried to make things easier for me to deal with. There are so many amazing people out there,” said Cays.
Thanks to the people of her community, Cays’s wedding day will be unforgettable.
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Tag: the American West
How Does Running Coast-to-Coast Help Veterans?
If you think your feet are tired at the end of the day, talk to Anna Judd.
Last month, the Orange County, California resident set out on an epic run to help veterans. Her plan? To run 3,200 miles from Venice, California to New York City’s Washington Square Park in an effort to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project and Team Red, White & Blue. Judd runs 40 miles a day, six days a week, charting her grueling adventure on her website and Facebook page. Along the way, veterans and other supporters run alongside her.
According to Lori Corbin of KABC, Judd raises funds through the Charity Miles app. Corporate sponsors have committed to donating $1 million to the startup, which allows anyone to fundraise for 26 different charities just by signing up and being active. Biking a mile earns 10 cents, while running or walking a mile earns 25 cents. Anyone who exercises can participate in Judd’s fundraising effort by downloading the app and entering in #runamerica to join her running team. You can also use the app to find a map of where Judd is currently running.
Under the direction of her trainer Navy veteran Sean Litzenberger, Judd hopes to finish the run in a hundred days. As she jogs, Judd (who has completed 30 marathons) is constantly refueling with water, chia seed packs, super food shakes, liquid supplements, and coffee with butter. She lives out of an RV and takes breaks when needed. She started out the run barefoot, but was wearing shoes by the time she arrived in cactus-filled Arizona. Still, nobody can accuse this remarkable runner — set to travel on foot through 17 states — of not being tough.
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Remembering a Remarkable Woman Who Raised $1 Million for Charity
The Denver community is mourning ultra-distance runner Essie Garrett, a formidable force for good as an educator and a charity fundraiser who died April 1 at age 74.
According to the Denver Post, Garrett was born in Texas, and at age 16, she joined the Army, serving for three years before she moved to Denver. Around that time, she began to follow Sri Chinmoy, an Indian spiritual leader who taught his followers that they can achieve enlightenment through the discipline of exercise. She took his teachings to heart and then some.
At the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, a Denver public technical college and alternative high school that has served thousands of low-income and minority students since its founding in 1916, Garrett taught refrigeration mechanics to mostly male classes full of students — some of whom were surprised to learn a woman knew so much about electronics. (She worked as a teacher until her retirement in 2010.) During this time, Garrett began to run distances unfathomable to most.
Garrett ran to raise money for a variety of charities, including Children’s Hospital Colorado, Colorado AIDS Project, Max Funds Animal Adoption, multiple-sclerosis research institutions, and the Denver Rescue Mission that serves the homeless. Starting on Thanksgiving in 1991, she began an annual tradition of running around Colorado’s Capitol building for 48 hours to raise money for the homeless. According to Claire Martin of the Denver Post, she often told friends complaining of hunger, “Don’t you ever say you’re starving. An appetite is not the same thing as starving.”
Essie Garrett ran more than 25,000 miles, raising more than $1 million for charities between 1981 to 2012. Chris Millius, her colleague at Emily Griffith Opportunity School said, “She was always coming up with different ideas for fundraising.”
The sight of Essie, her long dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail that bounced as she ran, will be missed around Denver’s City Park — but her contributions to charities will be long remembered.
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San Francisco’s Tech Talent Lends a Hand to Help the Homeless
Because they want to concentrate their funds and efforts on helping people, nonprofits often have little money or expertise to devote to developing sleek websites, mobile apps, or other tools that draw on the latest technology.
That’s why ReAllocate, a nonprofit that organizes San Francisco’s tech talent to volunteer for the city’s needy, set up its “Hacktivation for the Homeless” from March 28 through 30. Almost 100 software engineers turned up to work on the tech problems of 12 nonprofits serving the homeless of San Francisco.
Among the requests? Larkin Street Youth Services wanted a mobile app that would keep the homeless teens it serves up-to-date on services and allow them reserve beds in its shelter. The Homeless Prenatal Program wanted to enable patients to register online, rather than by filling out paperwork at the office. And the Homeless Employment Collaborative (HEC) wanted to be able to track the people it serves and measure the effectiveness of its programs.
HEC executive director Karen Gruneisen told Josh Wolf of Shareable, “After folks have graduated from our program and gotten a job, they are no longer part of our program and they don’t have a lot of incentive to stick around and stay in touch with us. A smartphone with continued data service in exchange for completing a quarterly survey with status on employment and housing can be just the incentive that we need.”
The nonprofits pitched their needs to the software engineers, then the coders got to work. This hackathon, however, had a unique twist: Instead of working nonstop (which is typical of hackathons), these tech workers were encouraged to take a break from coding and go out on the streets and talk to homeless people, filming their interviews if possible.
Illana Lipsett of ReAllocate told Nellie Bowles of Recode.net, “It’s about fostering a level of empathy between the tech workers, the nonprofits, the homeless. Often, it’s just about creating opportunities for people to interact.”
Organizers hope events like this Hacktivation will ease the growing tensions between tech workers in booming San Francisco and the poor people that the growth has left behind.
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Brewers Fight Proposed Regulation That Would End Grain Recycling Initiatives
If you’re a lover of the brewsky, then Denver is the city for you.
The Mile High city brews more beer than any other American city, and the state of Colorado boasts over 140 microbreweries. So it probably won’t surprise beer lovers here in the “Napa of beer” that many brewers are using their drinks as forces for environmental and economic good, donating their spent grains — barley, hops, wheat and other grains that have been soaked in water during the beer-brewing process — to farmers who can use them to feed their livestock, instead of throwing them away.
Oskar Blues, a Longmont-based brewery, runs the Hops and Heifers program. In a process it calls “Farm to Cup,” the brewery grows hops on its own farm, uses the hops for brewing, feeds its cattle with the spent grains, and then uses the meat from these cows in burgers sold at its restaurant.
But newly proposed FDA rules threaten to disrupt innovative recycling programs such as this, forcing microbreweries to send the spent grains to landfills or else engage in a costly process of drying out the grains and packaging them to prevent anyone from touching them before they reach the farmers. For many small brewers, the cost of this would be too great and they’d be forced to choose the landfill option.
According to John Fryar of the Longmont Times-Call, Paul Gatza, who directs the Boulder-based 20,000-member strong Brewers Association, spoke with FDA officials who say they’ll change the rule before issuing new draft of the regulations this summer. “The wording in the original proposed rules was pretty bad,” Gatza said. He estimates that the new rule would cost breweries $5 more per barrel to process the grains before donating or selling them to farmers, potentially putting many small brewers out of the recycling business. That would have been a shame, as a recent Brewers Association survey found that members reuse 90 percent of their spent grains.
FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnam told Fryar that they’ve gone back to the drawing board, rewriting some of the language in the regulation in a way that will hopefully allow this beer positivity cycle to continue. Now that’s good news worth lifting a beer over.
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Her Husband Fought Overseas. Now She’s Fighting for Him and All Wounded Vets
When the Army medically retired Capt. Charles Gatlin after he sustained a traumatic brain injury in Iraq in 2006, his wife Ariana Del Negro realized that her family’s fight was just beginning.
In fact, five years later, Gatlin was still suffering many problems in the aftermath of the detonation of a bomb less than twenty yards away from him, including dizziness, severe headaches, hearing loss, and anxiety, all of which left him unable to drive a car. But when he visited Montana’s Fort Harrison VA Medical Center for a complete evaluation, the VA decided to drop his disability rating from 70 percent to 10 percent, cutting his benefits significantly.
Del Negro believed the staff was incompetent at evaluating Gatlin’s complex brain injury, and she filed a complaint against a psychologist she thought was performing tests he wasn’t licensed to give. The Montana State Board of Licensing agreed with Del Negro, and as she told The Missoulian, the psychologist began referring veterans to neurologists for the appropriate tests after she “made enough noise.”
Del Negro continued to make noise, advocating for veterans and pointing it out whenever she felt her husband and others were not receiving the care they’d earned by serving our country. For her tireless efforts, she was named a fellow at the Elizabeth Dole Foundation in March. This organization focuses on helping military families, and named one caregiver from each state as fellows. Del Negro is the representative from Montana because of the improvements her advocacy work has brought about for veterans suffering from TBIs.
“I’m not an 18-year-old private,” Gatlin, who is now a graduate student at the University of Montana, told Eric Newhouse of the Great Falls Tribune. “I’ve got resources that I can bring to bear. But I’m really worried about those guys that don’t have the benefit of an education or other resources. I’ve done my part. I’d like just to go back to school and enjoy it, but that’s not happening. I’ve become an advocate because I want to make the system work not only for myself, but for others.”
Del Negro and Gatlin make an impressive advocacy team, serving on the advisory board for the Montana Brain Injury Center in Missoula. And as long as they are watching out, no veteran in Montana should go without treatment or benefits.
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The Nation’s Pastime Motivated This Disabled Teenager to Walk Again
A stiff-brimmed baseball cap. A bag of uncracked peanuts. A field of spring-green grass. Baseball’s opening day always brings a sense of renewed possibility to players and fans alike, even when the chances of winning a championship are stacked against them.
Sixteen-year-old high school baseball player Diego Alvarado has faced longer odds than most. Diagnosed with epilepsy as a baby, doctors finally managed to treat his seizures effectively by the time he was three, but his illness caused him to be developmentally delayed. Then when he was in middle school, aggressive leukemia struck. Doctors treated him with chemotherapy that badly damaged his joints. Alvarado ended up in a wheelchair and underwent two hip replacement surgeries.
Diego’s father, Colorado State Trooper Ivan Alvarado, told Neil H. Devlin of the Denver Post that he noticed Ivan was laying around the house, “being lazy like a teenager…but he had no quality of life.” He and the doctors decided to discontinue Diego’s chemotherapy, because as Ivan explained to Devlin, “We were faced with the decision of quality of life vs. quantity of life.”
They made the right decision: When the chemo ended, Diego transitioned from the wheelchair to a walker, and then told his P.E. teacher he was ready to go out for the Bennett High baseball team.
Coach Joe Stemo welcomed Diego on the team — Ivan didn’t even know his son had talked his way onto the Tigers’ roster. With two games under his belt, Diego has made contact with the ball, walked a few times and scored a run. Teammate Jonathan Cretti told Devlin, “It’s crazy how far he has come. He couldn’t even stand up in P.E. Now he’s playing baseball. And he’s always working his hardest. It’s one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.”
For the Alvarados, who immigrated to Colorado from Guatemala, Diego’s progress is just the thing that (ballpark) dreams are made of.
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Believe It or Not, This Veteran Tells Fellow Service Members to Take a Hike
“Dad instilled in me a sense of adventure; I always wanted to know what was around that next bend in the trail or what was over that next ridge.”
When Air Force veteran Tristan Persico was a boy, his dad taught him to explore the natural beauty of Montana, where they lived. While serving in Afghanistan (where Persico’s best friend was killed in an enemy attack), Persico pined for his home state. “While I was there, I constantly longed for the peace and beauty of Montana’s wilderness,” he writes in the Wild Montana blog.
After Persico’s honorable discharge in 2011, he followed the call of that longing and enrolled in the University of Montana’s Parks, Tourism, and Recreational Management program. But he also wanted to help other veterans ease the transition back home through encounters with nature, so he teamed up with Zach Porter, the Program Director of NEXGen Wilderness, to form the Montana Wilderness Association’s Veterans Outreach Program.
Through the program, Persico leads groups of veterans and their families on wilderness expeditions. This summer he’s planned a weekend of camping along the Rocky Mountain Front, a hike through the Great Burn area that’s been proposed for a wilderness designation, a “stewardship weekend” during which veterans will repair and clear trails along the Continental Divide, and more. “Wilderness is the perfect place for veterans to get together, tell stories around the campfire, and be around peers who understand what they have been through,” he writes.
Back in March, President Obama honored Persico with the Champions of Change award for Americans who advocate wilderness preservation and instill a love of nature in others.
Persico told Josh Meny of KPAX news, “Wilderness is naturally decompressing from society, so it lifts a lot of barriers that veterans feel they have in society to talk about these kinds of things and veterans are most comfortable around other veterans.”
Clearly for Tristan Persico, it’s a case of like father, like son.
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These Exceptional Volunteers Step Up Whenever Vets Are in Trouble
Undoubtedly, it’s valuable to have someone who’s willing to listen to you talk about your troubles. But to have a complete stranger be willing to be there for you any time of day or night? That’s priceless.
In Boise, Idaho, a group of extraordinary volunteers makes themselves available to distressed vets suffering from PTSD — whenever they need someone to talk to and for however long it takes. Anytime police in Boise encounter veterans who are having substance abuse issues, are suicidal, or are experiencing other grave problems, they call Marnie Bernard, the founder of Idaho Veterans Network , and two other veteran-volunteers, who talk the vet through his or her trauma. “I have upon occasion, yes, gone and sat with someone who was either cutting or having a really hard time. Once we get them better, we plug them in to the system that’s set up for them,” Bernard told Karen Zatkulak of KTVB. “We watch them grow, usually within a couple weeks of joining us. They aren’t as scared anymore. They don’t have their backs against the wall. They realize they are with people who understand them.”
In addition to providing an open ear, the The Idaho Veterans Network sponsors weekly meetings for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, offers legal advocacy for veterans who’ve run into trouble with the law due to their PTSD or traumatic brain injury, and throws events that get isolated veterans out of the house to socialize (via hunting and fishing expeditions or an annual racing night at the Meridian Speedway that drew about 5,000 vets and their families last year).
Boise Police Chief Mike Masterson said that his officers are encountering more and more distressed veterans. “It seems like we are getting about one a week.” He believes the police’s partnership with The Idaho Veterans Network has been invaluable. “I’m real proud that over the course of the last three years that we have saved somewhere around 15 lives in our community.”
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An Alternate Remedy for Suffering Veterans
For all the healing power that traditional medicine can provide, it doesn’t work for everyone. And for some of those individuals, alternative treatments can be the best medicine.
The Healing Warriors Program offers this to veterans who’ve tried every treatment that traditional medicine offers without success. The Fort Colllins, Colorado-based nonprofit gives five free visits for acupuncture, healing touch, or craniosacral therapy to each veteran who contacts them. If vets want to continue receiving treatment, Healing Warriors offers them at a discounted rate of $30 per session. For many — particularly those plagued with PTSD — the alternative treatments help when nothing else does.
Marine Corps veteran David Sykes has been visiting acupuncturist Abbye Silverstein since August for help with PTSD and a sciatic nerve injury caused by jumping out of helicopters when he was in the service. For years, walking and sitting have been painful. “I was hidden away with my pain and frustration,” Sykes told Sarah Jane Kyle of the Fort Collins Coloradoan. “This has helped me tremendously. I can’t say it will help everybody, but it helps me.”
Sue Walker, the director of the clinic, which is funded by donations, said that 90 different clients have visited Healing Warriors since it opened in last July. “It’s scientific,” she said. “It’s not voodoo. Most anything a veteran experiences on a physical level, acupuncture has been clinically proven to work for.”
Walker’s ultimate goal? To serve as many of those as possible that served our country. With the help of generous donors, she can do just that.
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