10-Year-Old Jonas Corona Already a Veteran At Helping LA’s Homeless..."Everyone Should Have a Home"

Jonas Corona, the 10-year-old founder of Love in the Mirror, is being honored by Civic Duty for his dedicated service to Los Angeles’ homeless population. Civic Duty cofounders Dr. Michael Omidi andJulian Omidi are in awe of the young man who relentlessly displays a level of compassion and commitment way beyond his years. Love in the Mirror provides children in need with food, toiletry kits, toys, and school supplies.

“Love in the Mirror was one of the first charitable organizations my brother and I supported more than two years ago when we began to ramp up our philanthropic work. I’m still astounded by the commitment and leadership of Jonas Corona and the tremendous impact his efforts have made to those in need,” says Julian Omidi, Civic Duty cofounder. “Jonas’ compassion for others and desire to inspire others to the same kind of work, well it’s simply incredible. He’s truly special … one of a kind.”

The outreach of Love in the Mirror increases every year. In four short years, more than 30,000 children and families have been served through the charity’s sock drives, PB&J sandwich giveaways, and Toys for Tots campaigns. This year Jonas is helping his younger brother Maximus start Ocean Maximus Beach Clean-up which kicked off January 12, 2014 in Long Beach and is also beginning preparations to establish a sorely needed youth shelter in Long Beach.

“This world could certainly use a few more Jonas Coronas,” says Civic Duty cofounder Dr. Michael Omidi. “He has helped so many and also serves as a powerful role model for others, motivating them to volunteer their time and do what they can for others. Jonas is 10-year-old dynamo! I can’t wait to see what he does next.”

In 2009, during one of his monthly visits to feed homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Jonas saw children lined up and waiting for food. Wanting to do more than hand out food once a month, Jonas and his mother Renee inquired about helping out at local shelters but strict minimum age requirements did not allow him to volunteer. Jonas was 6 years old. Not easily dissuaded, Jonas founded Love in the Mirror and his first organized drive yielded four truckloads of food, clothing and toys which he delivered to one of the shelters that had not allowed him to volunteer.

Love in the Mirror (http://www.loveinthemirror.org) helps homeless children obtain not only the food, clothing, and school supplies they need in everyday life, but also provides programs to empower children to succeed in future endeavors. Jonas Corona chose the name Love in the Mirror because he believes that “every kid should look in the mirror and love themselves-everyone should have a home.”

Waitresses Amy Sabani, Sarah Seckinger and Amber Kariolich receive tip of a lifetime from a complete stranger...

ROCKFORD - Boone County Family Restaurant waitresses Amy Sabani, 25, Sarah Seckinger, 23, and Amber Kariolich, 28, stared in disbelief Saturday as a blond-haired woman inexplicably handed them each $5,000 checks.

Sabani at first thought her check might say $500. But on closer inspection, she saw, yes, it was $5,000. She tried to decline it.

But the woman whose identity the waitresses and restaurant are protecting, insisted that she and the other waitresses take it.

"I want you girls to take these to help with school and everything else in life," the woman said over their objections. "Yes, you can take it. You put that in your pocket. God sent me here to help you."

It had been a slow morning at the restaurant that serves up tasty-looking cinnamon apple pancakes. As the waitresses "folded" silverware, they had been chatting about life, the student loans and bills piling up and dreams of returning to or finishing school.

Seckinger had noticed the woman watching them, but had thought maybe the she was merely interested in what they were saying.

Seckinger has worked at the restaurant for six years but dreams of becoming a police officer. She has previously tested to become a Boone County Sheriff's Police deputy.

Seckinger said although she has a single semester left to earn her associate degree in criminal justice, it had become too expensive for her. She plans to use the money to return to school, finish the degree and perhaps get a leg up at the next police officer test.

She plans to continue working at the restaurant.

"It's like a family here," Seckinger said.

That could be because Boone County Family Restaurant is a family-owned restaurant at the intersection of Routes 173 and 76 in Caledonia operated by Matt Nebiu. His father and uncle founded the business in 1982.

Nebiu said although the woman had been in the restaurant before, she wasn't a regular.

"I've never seen anything like this in 30-something years here," Nebiu said. "I've heard of it in other places, but not in this town or this area."

Today's Good Newsz Quote of the Day...

Amputee Dennis Aabo Sorensen becomes the first person in the world to "feel" in real time with his new bionic hand...

Nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Dennis Aabo Sørensen from Denmark became the first amputee in the world to feel – in real-time – with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand that was surgically wired to nerves in his upper arm. Silvestro Micera and his team at EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics and SSSA (Italy) developed the revolutionary sensory feedback that allowed Sørensen to feel again while handling objects. A prototype of this bionic technology was tested in February 2013 during a clinical trial in Rome under the supervision of Paolo Maria Rossini at Gemelli Hospital (Italy). The study is published in the February 5, 2014 edition of Science Translational Medicine, and represents a collaboration called Lifehand 2 between several European universities and hospitals.

“The sensory feedback was incredible,” reports the 36 year-old amputee from Denmark. “I could feel things that I hadn’t been able to feel in over nine years.” In a laboratory setting wearing a blindfold and earplugs, Sørensen was able to detect how strongly he was grasping, as well as the shape and consistency of different objects he picked up with his prosthetic. “When I held an object, I could feel if it was soft or hard, round or square.”

From Electrical Signal to Nerve Impulse
Micera and his team enhanced the artificial hand with sensors that detect information about touch. This was done by measuring the tension in artificial tendons that control finger movement and turning this measurement into an electrical current. But this electrical signal is too coarse to be understood by the nervous system. Using computer algorithms, the scientists transformed the electrical signal into an impulse that sensory nerves can interpret. The sense of touch was achieved by sending the digitally refined signal through wires into four electrodes that were surgically implanted into what remains of Sørensen’s upper arm nerves.

“This is the first time in neuroprosthetics that sensory feedback has been restored and used by an amputee in real-time to control an artificial limb,” says Micera.

“We were worried about reduced sensitivity in Dennis’ nerves since they hadn’t been used in over nine years,” says Stanisa Raspopovic, first author and scientist at EPFL and SSSA. These concerns faded away as the scientists successfully reactivated Sørensen’s sense of touch.

© LifeHand 2 / Patrizia Tocci

Connecting Electrodes to Nerves
On January 26, 2013, Sørensen underwent surgery in Rome at Gemelli Hospital. A specialized group of surgeons and neurologists, led by Paolo Maria Rossini, implanted so-called transneural electrodes into the ulnar and median nerves of Sørensen’s left arm. After 19 days of preliminary tests, Micera and his team connected their prosthetic to the electrodes – and to Sørensen – every day for an entire week.

The ultra-thin, ultra-precise electrodes, developed by Thomas Stieglitz’s research group at Freiburg University (Germany), made it possible to relay extremely weak electrical signals directly into the nervous system. A tremendous amount of preliminary research was done to ensure that the electrodes would continue to work even after the formation of post-surgery scar tissue. It is also the first time that such electrodes have been transversally implanted into the peripheral nervous system of an amputee.

The First Sensory-Enhanced Artificial Limb
The clinical study provides the first step towards a bionic hand, although a sensory-enhanced prosthetic is years away from being commercially available and the bionic hand of science fiction movies is even further away.

The next step involves miniaturizing the sensory feedback electronics for a portable prosthetic. In addition, the scientists will fine-tune the sensory technology for better touch resolution and increased awareness about the angular movement of fingers.

The electrodes were removed from Sørensen’s arm after one month due to safety restrictions imposed on clinical trials, although the scientists are optimistic that they could remain implanted and functional without damage to the nervous system for many years.

© LifeHand 2 / Patrizia Tocci

Psychological Strength an Asset
Sørensen’s psychological strength was an asset for the clinical study. He says, “I was more than happy to volunteer for the clinical trial, not only for myself, but to help other amputees as well.” Now he faces the challenge of having experienced touch again for only a short period of time. 

Sørensen lost his left hand while handling fireworks during a family holiday. He was rushed to the hospital where his hand was immediately amputated. Since then, he has been wearing a commercial prosthetic that detects muscle movement in his stump, allowing him to open and close his hand, and hold onto objects.

“It works like a brake on a motorbike,” explains Sørensen about the conventional prosthetic he usually wears. “When you squeeze the brake, the hand closes. When you relax, the hand opens.” Without sensory information being fed back into the nervous system, though, Sørensen cannot feel what he’s trying to grasp and must constantly watch his prosthetic to avoid crushing the object.

Just after the amputation, Sørensen recounts what the doctor told him. “There are two ways you can view this. You can sit in the corner and feel sorry for yourself. Or, you can get up and feel grateful for what you have. I believe you’ll adopt the second view.”

“He was right,” says Sørensen.

32 year old new dad Ben Johnston donates a kidney to Dr. "Frank" Jolesz a man he had never met...

QUINCY, Mass. (AP) — When a new father from Quincy read that his college buddy’s next-door neighbor in Brookline was ill and in desperate need of a kidney, he did what few people would even consider.

He volunteered to be tested to see if he was a match.

He was.

Ben Johnston, a 32-year-old songwriting student at Berklee College of Music, decided he would donate a major organ to a total stranger.

The man who needed the kidney was Dr. Ferenc ‘‘Frank’’ Jolesz, 67, who was suffering from kidney failure for the second time. His daughter Marta Jolesz donated a kidney to him about seven years earlier.

‘‘There’s a huge shortage of available organs and people are dying every day’’ Marta Jolesz, 37, said. ‘‘The average person is on the waiting list for five to 10 years. Most people don’t have that kind of time. My dad didn’t have that kind of time.’’

The Brookline TAB profiled Jolesz and his efforts to find a donor via a website and Facebook last August.

‘‘If the TAB wouldn’t have run the article, I wouldn’t have found out about it,’’ Johnston said.

‘‘Basically, when I first read about it, I thought, ‘Oh, he'll have no problem finding a donor,'’’ Johnston said. ‘‘Then, I thought if this person was my father or my father-in-law or someone I cared about, and he didn’t find a donor, I'd probably be angry.’’

The idea got lodged in his mind and didn’t go away, and Johnston said he’s not sure why.

‘‘I even waited a few days to tell (my wife),’’ said Johnston. ‘‘I thought it would go away, and it didn't.’’

Johnston’s wife, Heidi, is the pastor of the Faith Lutheran Church in Quincy. She had just started a new job and given birth to the couple’s son, Oliver, two months before. She was not enthusiastic about her husband undergoing a major elective surgery, so she spent about a week contemplating the decision, spiritually.

‘‘Every week I stand up in the pulpit and ask people to step outside their comfort zone and care for people in need,’’ Heidi Johnston said. ‘‘I thought, ‘This is the opportunity that we've been given to do that,’ and I thought I should support Ben.’’

Ben Johnston did some research and learned that most donors are back on their feet in a couple of months. Also, the hospital staff emphasized that he was free to change his mind at any stage of the testing, which took about two months.

Ben Johnston is composing a song about his organ-donation experience. This is the first verse of what is tentatively titled ‘‘Goodbye, Dear Kidney.’’

After a third of a century, you up

and left me

Jumped right in to some other man

All my scars are still healing, and

I've got the feeling

I won’t be seeing you again

You left a hole deep within in me,

and I'm just beginning

To fill up the space the best that I can

And though sometimes I miss you,

the truth is I wish you

A long happy life with him

So goodbye, goodbye dear kidney

If I start to cry, if my tears don’t dry, forgive me

It’s hard to let you go, but in my heart I know

You’re better off without me

So goodbye, goodbye dear kidney

Heidi said she was with the Jolesz family while Ben and Frank were in the operating room, which was a great comfort. Ben’s surgery went very quickly.

‘‘The kidney started perfusing (taking in blood) instantly,’’ said Heidi. ‘‘We were hugging and crying at Brigham and Women's. That was incredible. That certainly bonds you. The daughters were in Ben’s hospital (room) rubbing his head and feet.

Jolesz wasn’t able to do a face-to-face interview because of the drugs he is taking to suppress his immune system, but he wrote in an email that he’s feeling much better.

‘‘Ben gave me the gift of life, something that I almost lost,’’ Jolesz wrote. ‘‘Words are not enough to express my gratitude for Ben and Heidi’s selfless act of helping me. My hope is that what they did for me will motivate others to help those in need.’’

Ben served two tours of duty in Iraq when he was an officer in the Army. His job was building bridges and other kinds of road construction. He said that he felt ambivalent about his work and the war in general, but donating a kidney was something he'd do again if he could.

It’s now just over two months after the operation and Ben said that except for the occasional pain at the incision, ‘‘I'm pretty much back to normal, and to me, that’s such a small amount of time to give someone a new lease on life. I would do it again.

‘‘It was the most amazing thing I've ever done. Heidi made me a scrapbook for Christmas, and I get emotional looking at the pictures and reading what his daughters wrote.’’

Everybody interviewed for this story said that they hope it encourages more people to donate kidneys.

‘‘Everything aligned for Ben and he was able to give the gift of life to my father and help our family,’’ said Marta Jolesz. ‘‘This journey has been truly unbelievable, and we feel so fortunate to find not only a donor, but a donor like Ben and his family.’’

Today's Good Newsz Quote of the Day...

Message in a bottle found off of Nova Scotia 58 years after it began its journey...

BOSTON – It was April 1956, and the No. 1 song was Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, scientist Dean Bumpus was busy releasing glass bottles in a large stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

Nearly 58 years later, a biologist studying grey seals off Nova Scotia found one of the bottles in a pile of debris on a beach, 300 miles from where it was released.

The drift bottle was among thousands dumped in the Atlantic Ocean between 1956 and 1972 as part of Bumpus’ study of surface and bottom currents. About 10 percent of the 300,000 bottles have been found over the years.“It was almost like finding treasure in a way,” Warren Joyce said Friday.

Joyce found the bottle Jan. 20 on Sable Island, about 185 miles southeast of Halifax.

He contacted scientists at Woods Hole and dutifully gave them the time and place information Bumpus had asked for in a postcard inside the bottle. His reward will be exactly what Bumpus promised in 1956 to anyone who returned a bottle: a 50-cent piece.

“I didn’t want the reward, but they said they are sending it to me anyway,” Joyce said, chuckling.

Joyce said the bottle had been sand-blasted over about 75 percent of its surface. He could still read the words, “Break This Bottle,” so he pried off the rubber stopper. Inside, there was a note from Bumpus explaining that the bottle was among many being released to study the ocean.

In those days, there was no other way to study currents, said Steven Jayne, a senior scientist at Woods Hole.

“We didn’t have satellites to track currents like we do now. So the only thing you could do was to see where something started and where it ended up,” he said. “That was a pretty good approach.”

Using the number on the postcard, Woods Hole workers tracked the bottle found by Joyce to a group of 12 released not far off Nova Scotia on April 26, 1956.

Woods Hole archivist David Sherman said three other bottles from the same batch were found within a few months after they were dropped in the ocean: two in Nova Scotia and a third in Eastham, on Cape Cod. There’s no way to tell for sure when the bottle Joyce found washed up on Sable Island, but judging by its sand-worn condition, it may have been there for decades, Sherman said.

Bumpus needed thousands upon thousands of empty bottles for his well-intentioned littering of the seas. In September 1959, he solicited colleagues’ help, writing in a memo: “All hands are respectfully requested (until further notice) to bring their dead soldiers to the lab and deposit them in the box just inside the gate. Whiskey, rum, beer, wine or champagne bottles will be used to make drift bottles. Any clean bottles – 8 oz. to one quart in size will be gratefully received. Bottoms up!”

Bumpus died in 2002. About 270,000 of his bottles remain unaccounted for, Sherman said.

“Some of them were probably damaged, some were probably kept as keepsakes, and the rest, who knows? We may find some more in the future,” he said.

“I think everybody loves to find a message in a bottle.”