Shoe shiner donates his tips to Children's Hospital - all $200,000 of them! Gives every cent of his tips back to the children.

PITTSBURGH —It starts before dawn in the Pittsburgh darkness, as the 88 Penn pulls up in front of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Albert Lexie gets off the bus.
For 32 years, Lexie has been examining his schedule each morning, like a doctor on the clock. But the longtime shoe shiner’s gift isn’t healing, it’s giving back.

A shoe shine costs $5, but Lexie said customers have been generous with their tips since he started working at the hospital in 1981.

“Most of them give $6, some of them give $7,” Lexie told Channel 4 Action News anchor Wendy Bell.

And Lexie gives every cent of his tips back to the children.

Making a Difference: One woman's crusade to save produce to feed those less fortunate through her Hidden Harvest project.

Christy Porter believes in second chances.

She runs Hidden Harvest, a nonprofit that saves unwanted produce and gives it to nearly 60,000 low income individuals in California’s Coachella Valley region every month, NBC News reports.

“Produce is the most expensive thing in a low-income family’s grocery cart,” Porter told the Desert Sun. “It’s the first thing to go back on the shelf.”

Porter’s solution to the high cost of produce and the fact that 40 percent of what American farmers grow gets thrown away, was to start a local anti-hunger initiative, she told NBC News.

Ethan Gilman, the Alabama boy that was held hostage receives toys, money and gets a trip to Disney World from complete strangers from around the country.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Donors have given thousands of dollars and scores of Teddy bears and toy cars to the Alabama boy held hostage for days in an underground bunker until FBI agents shot and killed the captor in a dramatic rescue.

Some of the money raised during a brief online campaign is going to give the child and his rural family a dream trip to Disney World, organizers say.

But thousands more in contributions are being placed into accounts overseen by a lawyer in cooperation with a guardian, both of whom were appointed by a state judge to help care for the boy, Ethan Gilman of Midland City.

Dale County Probate Judge Sharon Michalic said the child's mother approved the arrangement, which Michalic described as typical for cases in which an underage child and money are involved.

Follow up story: Homeless man who returned engagement reunited with brother and sister who saw the story on TV...large donations to help him out are pouring in.

A homeless man in Kansas City, Mo., made national headlines more than a week ago when he returned a valuable platinum and diamond engagement ring accidentally dropped into his cup of change by a woman offering some extra cash. Now, hundreds of donors have contributed more than $16,000 to a page on GiveForward.com to help Billy Ray Harris get his life back on track. The man's rewards don't stop with financial help -- the media story helped him connect with a brother in Lubbock, Texas, he hasn't seen in nearly 30 years.

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

Japanese town destroyed by tsunami gets anonymous gift of gold in the mail...

An anonymous donor is showing Japan a heart of gold.

A so-called "goodwill gold rush" has hit a Japanese fishing port that was devastated by the 2011 tsunami, according to Australia News Network. About 10 days ago, packages containing bars of gold began arriving in Ishinomaki, which is located in Miyagi prefecture.

Two tsunami support groups and the local fish market were each given 4.4 pounds in an anonymous parcel sent from Nagano, AFP reported. In total, the gold's estimated worth comes to $250,000.

Alert sanitation workers rescues baby puppy... "Garby"

                 "Garby" a baby puppy is safe at home after an Indiana trash collector rescued it from a garbage can. Last week, Michael Upchurch was on the back of a garbage truck on his usual route in Muncie, Ind., when he noticed something deeply unsettling. According to Fox 59, he saw a brown head move inside a blue recycling bag, and heard whining noises. "It was a terrible sound," Upchurch told the station. "This ole' doggy here hollering, 'Save me.' I guess in doggy talk." Shocked, Upchurch opened the bag and found a 6-week-old puppy looking nearly frozen. The two of them moved to the cab of the truck to sit in front of the heat, then went to the sanitation facility to give the puppy a warm bath and blanket, the Muncie Star Press reported. As soon as the puppy healed fully, which took about a day at an animal shelter, Upchurch and his wife adopted it.

X- Box makes a big save: 6 year old saves his family from house fire...after being up late playing X-Box

BROWNSVILLE, TN -

(WMC-TV) - Seven people were inside a 100-year-old house on Windrow Road in Brownsville when fire broke out.

The family inside made it out alive thanks to a 6-year-old boy.

Taylor Hendrix was up late playing X-Box at his grandparents house around 4 a.m. Saturday when fire erupted inside.

"It started in the attic and came down the chimney," Hendrix said.

"He came in there and he was screaming papa, papa the house is on fire," said his grandmother, Paula Brown.

Brown and her husband, Mike, were all inside the burning house, along with five of their grandchildren.

When little Taylor woke them up, they quickly ran outside.

"Lost everything...everything we own," added Mike.

Valentine's Couple sightseeing on the Golden Gate Bridge stumble upon a bag containing over $11,000 in cash and - return it.

Carlos and Barbara Landeros only wanted a little Valentine's Day romance.

So last Thursday, the Vallejo, Calif., couple decided to drive to San Francisco for a swanky romantic dinner. And of course no romantic outing would be complete without a pre-dinner trip to the Golden Gate Bridge.

But as soon as they pulled into Vista Point, Barbara spotted a black camera bag without an owner in sight.

With tourists running to and fro, she stood guard over the bag in hopes the owner would soon return.

"We wait about 45 minutes before we picked up the bag," said Barbara Landeros at her Vallejo home. "Because we didn't know who it belongs to."

With no one returning for the bag, Barbara eventually decided to take a peek inside. At first she saw a camera lens, then credit cards, then an envelope of cash -- lots of cash.

Giving Back and Doing Good: Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences announced by Silicon Valley Tech Moguls - Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner... biggest prize in the history of Science.

Mark Zuckerberg nailed the no. 1 charitable spot in Silicon Valley last year and has kicked off 2013 by joining a number of tech moguls in giving away the biggest prize in the history of science.

The Facebook founder, along with Google’s Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, announced the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences on Wednesday. The organization will reward an unprecedented amount of prize money to researchers making advances in curing intractable diseases and extending human life, the Guardian reported.

The organization doled out a total of $33 million through its foundation to 11 winners making huge strides in disease research, according to a press release.

“We believe the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences has the potential to provide a platform for other models of philanthropy, so people everywhere have an opportunity at a better future,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Parents carry on their daughter's legacy by building an orphanage in her name in Haiti. "Be Like Brit"

In 2010, 316,000 people lost their lives in the level 7 earthquake that shook Haiti to its core. Among them was 19-year-old Britney Gengel, a Lynn University student who was visiting Haiti to do humanitarian work. On the morning of Jan. 12th, she texted her family, expressing joy and delight with the people she had met:

“They love us so much and everyone is so happy,” she wrote. “They love what they have and they work so hard to get nowhere, yet they are all so appreciative. I want to move here and start an orphanage myself.”

This was the last message Leonard and Cherylann Gengel, would ever receive from their daughter. Later that day, the ground shook and the hotel she was in collapsed. She and 5 other Lynn University students and professors were killed.

According to the Huffington Post, Leonard and Cherylann were told by school officials that Britney had gone missing, and later that she was on a Florida bound helicopter. “Elated and relieved,” they traveled to Fort Lauderdale to reunite with their daughter. They then learned that officials had incorrect information, and that Britney would not be coming home after all.

“It’s unfathomable,” Leonard Gengel told Huffington Post Miami, “for a parent to lose a child twice in 36 hours.”

Long gone servicemen's Cape Cod family members finally receive medals recognizing their US Military service....

HYANNIS — When Army Cpl. William Zakrzewski left family members after a divorce, they had just three things to remember him by.

Based on those things — a wedding photo, a receipt for war bonds and an old Social Security card — Zakrzewski's son, Michael, spent the past year piecing together his father's life.

But on Tuesday, during a small ceremony at the Hyannis headquarters of the Nam Vets Association of the Cape and Islands, Zakrzewski received four medals for his father's service in the Pacific theater during World War II, filling in some of the holes."Nobody in our family knew anything about his military service," said Michael Zakrzewski, 61, of Harwich. His father left when he was in the seventh grade and died in 1987. "We didn't know where he'd served ... where he was buried."

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

Touching story as dozens of people from across the country step up to help elderly less fortunate woman give her husband a proper burial..."I loved that man more than anything in this whole wide world"

ARLINGTON, Wash. -- The community has rallied around an elderly Arlington woman who had nowhere to turn and no money to bury her husband, who died last Tuesday.

It was on Friday that KOMO News first told the story of 91-year-old Elsie Smith, who was planning an estate sale to raise money for her husband's burial. She didn't want to sell all her belongings, but she had promised her husband, Joe, that she would give him a proper burial.

The response to the story was immediate and overwhelming.

"It's completely unbelievable. We get donations from our viewers all the time, but I have never seen anything like this in the entire time I've been here," said KOMO 4 News Director Holly Gauntt.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are successful in recruiting Richard Branson and 11 other overseas billionaires to their "Giving Pledge" where members agree to donate at least half of their fortunes to charity.

Richard Branson, ever the pacesetter, is piloting something new -- but it has nothing to do with travel.

The founder of Virgin Group and his wife, Joan, are part of the first cohort of non-U.S. billionaires who have signed up to give away half their wealth to charity through the Giving Pledge.

Twelve signatories from countries including Russia, South Africa, Australia, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Malaysia have signed on to the non-binding moral contract started by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010. The pledge aims to give wealthy people more authority over where their fortunes are donated during their lifetime.

The Giving Pledge initially included only U.S. billionaires because, as Buffett told Forbes, "I felt we had our hands full in the U.S."

Businesses are recruiting moms back to their former companies...

McKinsey & Co. wants its moms back.

The big consulting firm is quietly reaching out to female employees who left some years ago—presumably to start families—to see whether they are ready to return.

Details of the initiative, still in its early stages, are sketchy, and McKinsey offered no further information, except to say it isn't a companywide policy. But the effort is one small signal that at least some companies are re-examining some of the most basic terms of women's working lives.

A special Valentine's gift arrives for a Texas mother who gives birth to two sets of identical twin boys

HOUSTON — Tressa Montalvo remembers vividly the day her doctor told her she wasn’t just having twins, she was having twins – twice.

"When we got to Dr. Kirshon’s office, he was quick to say right away, ‘You have four,’" Montalvo said. "And, of course, I just couldn’t believe it. If I wasn’t already lying down on that table, I would have been on the floor."

What makes these four even more remarkable for Montalvo and her husband, Manuel, is that these are not technically quadruplets. They are two sets of identical twins born on Valentine’s Day.

This everyday hero is dedicated to saving kids and horses by guiding them down the right path..."Everyone should have their thing. If everyone would pick one thing, just one, and did it to the best of their ability -- I mean went all in, put all your passion and love into it -- the world will be an amazing place."

Like any horse-crazy little girl, young Elizabeth Zarkos collected Breyer figurines of blood-bay Arabians, black Thoroughbreds, buckskin Mustangs and more. And, like any horse-crazy little girl, she soon discovered that the plastic-molded legs on those toys didn't hold up too well galloping around bedspreads and jumping over teddy bears.

But when her plastic horses snapped off a leg or two, instead of throwing them away and asking mommy for another, Zarkos used Scotch tape to bandage their broken legs and put them up on the shelf to recover.

Her father's career in resort management meant the family was often uprooted, so sometimes during packing up to move, her mother would accidentally lose the ones with lots of tape.

Still, Zarkos tried to keep all she could, because those horses were a constant in the life of this admittedly ultra shy girl, who says she struggled with constantly changing elementary schools, 11 in all. In high school at Newport Beach, she kept her drawings of horses in her notebooks to herself.

9 year old daughter's insistence that her mother "always" wear her bike helmet helps save her life.

At 9 years old, Gracie Langton saw the most terrifying scene she said she’ll ever witness: her mother crumpled on the ground unconscious.

“Just for, like, 10 minutes, it was the worst possible thing you could ever see in your whole life,” said Gracie, now 10.

She and her mom, Deanne Langton, had been riding their bikes together through their Tampa Palms neighborhood for years. On Aug. 31, Gracie asked Langton to wear her bike helmet.

“All moms tell their kids to wear a helmet,” Gracie said she told her mother. “Why don’t moms wear helmets?”

Langton didn’t wear her helmet that day, but Gracie’s words stuck with her the next. As they mounted their bikes for a ride Sept. 1, Langton grabbed her helmet and strapped it on.

The ride started like any other. But then a vehicle pulled out in front of the pair, and they both braked abruptly. Gracie stopped without any issues. Her mother, on the other hand, flew over her handlebars and landed on her head.

Mystery writer from Martha's Vineyard may have a romance story to write after finding love at age 80 when reunited with an old friend after 60 years

Vineyard author Cynthia Riggs found love later in life. At the age of 80, decades after divorcing her first husband, she reconnected with a man from her distant past.

She and her current fiancé, 91-year-old Howard Attebery, worked together at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego when she was just 18 years old. They had not communicated with each other for 63 years when, last spring, they were reunited and, after a very short courtship, got engaged.