Best News of the Year

Lisa Nagengast was grateful she dialed a wrong number in October. Nagengast had been caring for her brother, an Army vet who was recovering from back surgery, in Columbus, Nebraska. When she thought he was doing better, she went home to Tampa, but when she got off the plane she got a message from her brother Greg Holeman, saying he was in terrible pain and needed to get to the hospital but was unsure how. Nagengast called what she thought was his social worker in Columbus to ask for help in driving her brother to the hospital, but she misdialed and got the Jimmy John’s sandwich shop. Store manager Jason Voss found a driver to get Holeman to the hospital. Voss later said he did not hesitate to help. “I was pretty sure she had no idea it was Jimmy John’s,” Voss told The Washington Post. “I didn’t think I needed to say anything. It didn’t seem relevant at that moment.”

Juliette Moore and boyfriend Isaiah Cormier were camping near Denver when a storm hit. Cormier was standing outside their tent when authorities believe a lightning bolt struck a tree and leaped into Cormier’s neck. Moore, who had just taken CPR classes, found Cormier on the ground and started giving him chest compressions and eventually revived him.

There was good news on the environmental front in 2018. The Belize Coral Reef, the second largest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, was removed from UNESCO’s endangered list. The world heritage organization credited the nation of Belize for taking “visionary” steps, such as a moratorium on oil exploration, to protect the natural wonder.

In one of the year’s most riveting stories, 12 boys ages 11 to 16 playing for a youth soccer team, and their coach, were rescued from a cave system in Thailand. The team entered the cave on June 23, but floods from monsoon rains trapped them there. They were not found for nine days. A massive rescue operation involving several countries was begun, and it took several more days until divers were able to help the boys out of the cave. Sadly, one diver, a former Thai Navy SEAL, lost his life while helping rescue the boys.

The family of 11-year-old Roxli Doss, who had been diagnosed with inoperable brain tumor, were hoping for a miracle. They might have gotten one. The tumor apparently is gone and the Texas girl is back to riding horses, the activity she loves the most. In June, doctors at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin diagnosed Roxli with an inoperable brain tumor. She went through weeks of radiation despite the fact there was no cure. Then the tumor disappeared. In a USA Today story, Dr. Virginia Harrod with Dell Children’s Medical Center said, “When I first saw Roxli’s MRI scan, it was actually unbelievable. The tumor is undetectable on the MRI scan, which is really unusual.”

When a rainstorm threatened to ruin the beach wedding of Ariel and Dulce Gonzalez in Mississippi, Cynthia and Shannon Strunk went into action. Even though they did not know the couple, the Strunks, who lived nearby, offered to host the wedding and quickly got their beach house ready for the 50 guests on hand to witness the nuptials. The Strunks also gave the bride and groom a bottle of champagne and two glasses. In all the excitement, neither party had even learned each other’s names until that point. “We will never ever forget that day,” said Gonzalez. “That was an extreme blessing and made our big day even more special.”

A bobcat learned the hard way that you do not mess with grandmas, especially when the grandmother is DeDe Phillips. The grandmother from rural Georgia fought off the animal and strangled it to death while keeping quiet to avoid waking her 5-year-old granddaughter who was asleep inside her house and keep her from coming outside. Phillips suffered a broken finger, as well as cuts and bite marks and received shots for rabies.

Talk about taking the plunge. Shortly after tying the knot with his wife Cindy on Orange Beach, Alabama, Petty Officer 2nd Class Zac Edwards was approached by a woman approached who said there was a man in the ocean struggling to get to shore. Edwards jumped into the surf with a flotation device and tried to keep the man’s head above water. Because the current was so strong, Edwards and the man in the water needed help from a lifeguard to get to shore.

During the first week of August, Shane Drossard of Minneapolis, saved a woman who attempted suicide from the Mississippi River. The woman leapt from the Washington Avenue Bridge at 2 a.m., survived the fall into the river but got pummeled by the rapid current. Drossard, a homeless man living beneath the bridge, heard the woman’s voice and rushed to her rescue. After retrieving her from the water, he told the woman she was beautiful, that she had so much to live for, and he was not going to let go of her.

As a graduate student, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was not acknowledged more than 40 years ago for her work in discovering pulsars — a discovery her male colleagues received a Nobel Prize for in 1974. The astrophysicist finally received overdue recognition when she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which includes a $3 million award. Bell Burnell intends to donate the prize money to the Institute of Physics to help others get into the field of astrophysics.

When a knife-wielding attacker pursued a woman into a Starbucks, others fled. But not Blaine Hodge. The aspiring rapper and actor, who was at Starbucks for a business meeting, put himself between the assailant and the woman. The attacker injured Hodge, but the police arrived and grabbed the assailant. Hodge was taken to a hospital with stab wounds and listed in critical but stable condition after suffering at least seven stab wounds, including injuries to his right hand that may never completely heal. A GoFundMe page was set up for Hodge, who thanked friends and supporters on several videos.

There were encouraging movements toward reducing tension on the Korean Peninsula this year. In addition to the historic summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, North and South Korea agreed to remove landmines on each side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The area is 155 miles long across the peninsula and has divided the two Koreas since the ceasefire that halted the Korean War in 1953. The two nations also announced plans to excavate their side of the DMZ to recover the remains of soldiers who died along the border.

In an act of life affirmation, Regina Harris and Billy Bob Mason were married in Las Vegas on the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at the country music concert both were attending. At a memorial before the nuptials, wedding guests, many of whom had attended the concert a year earlier, released 58 doves, one for each of the shooting victims.

Justin Gallegos, a distance runner who competes for the University of Oregon, became the first athlete with cerebral palsy to sign a professional contract with athletic footwear and apparel company Nike. Gallegos, a 21-year-old junior at the university, was notified of the contract after a running practice with his fellow Oregon runners, and the filmed reaction of Gallegos went viral. Gallegos, who is from Santa Clarita, California, started running at age 14. He has helped Nike develop a specialty running shoe for those with disabilities.

Ashley and Andrew Goette were expecting their first child but neither could have expected what would happen to them in October. In the span of four days, Ashley would save the life of her husband and give birth to her son Lennon. The morning of Oct. 16, Ashley was awakened by her husband, who sounded like he was snoring but in fact was gasping for air. She called 911 and paramedics took Andrew to the hospital. Doctors told Ashley Andrew might have severe brain damage. Ashley sat next to her husband and told him she was not going to have the baby until he could hold the child. A few days later, Andrew began to move and awoke with no brain damage. The next day, Ashley started having contractions and went into labor that night. Her son was born on Friday morning.