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

Play any game with this much sportsmanship and both teams will always win - team manager with developmental disability gets his shot at glory.

(CBS News) EL PASO, Texas -- Coach Peter Morales of the Coronado High School Thunderbirds in El Paso, Texas, makes no qualms about it: he has a favorite on this team.

Team manager Mitchell Marcus has a developmental disability, but he far surpasses everyone here when it comes to love of the game.

"He's just an amazing person that our basketball team loves being around," Morales says.

Mitchell's mom, Amy, says he's always been that way.

"Mitchell always had a basketball, that was always what he wanted for his birthday," she says.

And because basketball is that important to him, on the last game of the regular season, the coach told Mitchell to suit up.

"I was very happy," Mitchell says of what it was like to put on the team's uniform.

Just wearing a jersey was enough for Mitchell, but what he didn't know -- what no one knew at the time -- was that the coach planned to play him at the end, no matter what the score.

Stranded airline passengers treated to a concert by United Express Pilot Billy Hock

As wicked winter weather moves over the Midwest this week, naturally a slew of airline passengers have found themselves faced with interminable delays at the airport. At Kansas City International Airport, all flights were canceled for Thursday night and in St. Louis, more than 320 flights at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport were canceled, the Associated Press reported.

But, according to KSDK in St. Louis, Billy Hock, a captain for United Express, took it into his own hands (or fingers?) to help passengers stuck at Lambert Airport pass the time by giving an impromptu piano concert Thursday. By the way, Captain Hock composes all of his music, and while passengers were tired he did bring smiles to their faces. He played in terminal one for about three hours as a mixture of snow and sleet covered the runway.Check it out in the video above.

Grandma named Dorothy gets her final wish - to fly over her home in Kansas.

It looks like Dorothy finally got to fly over the rainbow.

In an incredibly touching video, a family grants 92-year-old grandmother Dorothy Ellis her final wish: to fly over her Kansas home in a motorized parachute.

Posted on Youtube Thursday, Holly Ellis explained in the video's description that her grandmother revealed her wish to family members about six weeks before her death.

"It shocked the hell out of all of us," Ellis told The Huffington Post of the sudden request. She also recalled that her grandmother said, "I figured I'm going one way or another by now."

Last shuttered town in New Jersey is reopened after devastating Hurricane Sandy ... "It was almost like Christmas, you know, when you're expecting a good gift...You can't sleep. You keep waking up hoping it's daytime"

MANTOLOKING, N.J. — For the first time in almost four months, residents are living again in Mantoloking, a well-off New Jersey beach town that suffered some of the worst of Superstorm Sandy's wrath.

Town officials allowed residents to return Friday to stay. It's the last New Jersey community to hit that milestone since the storm.

Fisherman jumps into freezing waters to save stranded dog...

A brave fisherman jumped into the Siberian sea to save a dog which got stranded on a floating ice floe in freezing temperatures.

The black dog was seen shivering on a block of ice in waters off Magadan Port, Siberia, in the Okhotsk Sea in snowy weather.

The Russian fisherman jumped into the water, which can drop to temperatures of -24C in winter, to save the terrified pooch.

Video footage shows the dog floating around 20ft away from the nearest boat in the port, which is covered in a thick blanket of snow. It is unclear how it originally got stuck on the ice originally.

Mom and daughter rescued by anonymous good samaritan

A U.S. Border Patrol mechanic rescued a woman and her toddler after the woman lost control of her car and went into a canal near Interstate 8 and Bowker Road on Wednesday morning.

Willie Sandoval said his wife was driving south on Bowker Road when she lost control of her car and veered into the canal. She managed to get on top of the submerged car with her 2-year-old daughter.

A Border Patrol mechanic, as yet unidentified, was driving on Bowker Road when he saw the car nearly submerged in the canal.

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

Man loses 245 pounds and has Facebook to thank!

Matthew Briggs received the wakeup call he needed from Facebook.

Or more specifically, Facebook’s photo-tagging feature. In December of 2009, Briggs attended a Christmas party, returned home, checked Facebook and saw that he’d been tagged in a photo taken at the party of himself and his father.

He was stunned.

“I’d fooled myself into thinking I wasn’t that much bigger than him,” says Briggs, 30. “The truth is, I was actually twice his size.”

Briggs had ballooned to 434 pounds without really being aware of it. That night after the party, his dad asked him a simple question: “Are you happy?”

“I had to admit that I wasn’t,” he says.

Mystery woman finds engagement ring on the train and turns it in ... “I told my kids that night about the ring. I wanted them to know the importance of returning something that didn’t belong to them.”

A Brooklyn bride-to-be unknowingly lost her three-carat diamond engagement ring at a subway station — then got it back two months later thanks to a kindhearted stranger.

Hager Elsayed, a teacher assistant who got engaged last May, was convinced she had lost the princess-cut ring for good in November and was considering buying a replacement.

“I felt so bad,” she said.

She was riding the N train when she noticed the ring wasn’t on her finger. She thought she’d left it at home, but after tearing the place apart, she concluded it must have slipped off her finger.

Watch the "Kid Oscars" as these kids reenact scenes from this years popular movies

Take "Zero Dark Thirty," "Lincoln" and a handful of other Oscar-nominated movies, subtract the suspense, historical drama and controversy, and add a couple of cherubic little faces reciting lines they can't quite pronounce.

Voilà: you have this video above of kids recreating movies in the running for 2013's Best Picture Academy Award. It's too late to make it into this year's Best Short Film category -- but there's always 2014.

Facebook to the rescue...missing elderly man found after daughter posts messages on Facebook

Around 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, my mother called me in a panic from Florence, S.C. She said my 74-year-old father, Warren Baird, was missing. It was December 12, the day the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world.

My mom, June, had come home that afternoon to an open garage door and no sign of my dad or his car. Typically this wouldn't be a big deal, but over the past few years my dad had begun to show signs of memory loss. When he hadn't turned up by dinnertime, she knew something was wrong.

I live about five hours away in Ball Ground, Ga., just outside of Atlanta. I arrived in Florence around 3 a.m. and entered the living room to find my mom and sister, Nikki, quietly staring at one another and crying. They had called the police and filed a report, but because of the late hour and limited resources, the police could not conduct a full missing persons search until the morning. We felt so helpless.

Everyday Hero: 4 year old rescues her baby 2 year old sister after horrible accident

KPTV - FOX 12

NASELLE, WA (KPTV) -

A 4-year-old girl dragged her sister from the wreckage of a car crash that killed their mother and huddled up in some nearby brush until they were discovered hours later.

Washington troopers said an Astoria woman, identified as Jessica Rath, 26, was driving along the Washington coastline to pick up her fisherman husband near Long Beach Tuesday night.

At some point on the drive, she talked to her husband on the phone and learned he was actually arriving into the Port of Portland. 

She turned the car around and began driving toward Portland.

Investigators said the last phone contact between husband and wife consisted of him telling her not to worry about driving to Portland and instead just to head back home to Astoria.

Rath, police said, told him she was OK to drive to Portland.

Sorority girl loses more than 100 pounds ... "Once you start, don't give up. The hardest thing to do is to continue. If you have a bad day, don't make it a bad week."

(CNN) -- Brittni Garcia's family didn't go out for walks; they went out for dinner. And when they were at home, they enjoyed watching movies, playing board games and eating big Mexican-style home-cooked meals.

This lazy lifestyle led Garcia to weigh more than 200 pounds by the eighth grade.

"My mom always said, 'You are a big girl. You are just big-boned,'" said the 25-year-old information specialist. "So I just accepted it."

Through high school and college, her weight continued to rise. But even at 235 pounds, Garcia didn't think her weight was a problem -- until she couldn't fit into her "fat shorts" anymore.

That was December 2009.

It was a typical night for Garcia. She was studying for finals in her sorority house at Eastern Illinois University and wanted to change into some comfortable clothing. She found her red pajama XXL shorts that she normally wore to bed.

As she struggled to pull them up, she realized they were too tight and uncomfortable -- her "big, comfy shorts" no longer fit.

"Tons of emotions ran through my head," she said. "I was afraid that was the way my life was going to be."

U.S. Soldier arrives home early from his duty and surprises his sons at their schools after being away for more than a year!

Watch as a cheerleader makes an amazing half-court shot at basketball game

Ashlee Arnau, a cheerleader from Hattiesburg, finally made the half-court shot in the last home game of the season.

Today's Quote of the Day...

WWII medals missing for 70 years found in laundry room and returned to soldiers family...

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. (KABC) -- Hyla Merin gladly accepted a Purple Heart, a Silver Star and six other war medals at her home Sunday. But she is no war vet. The honors were earned by a man she's never met.

"It's such an honor to do this in his memory," Merin said in tears. "I was named after him that's how my name Hyla comes from Hyman which was his name."

It was May of 1945 when 2nd Lt. Hyman Markel was killed in a gunfight while fighting German troops in Italy during WWII. If not for pictures Merin would have no idea what he look like. The Army officer died before she was born. Her mother didn't speak about her father much. He died while she was seven months pregnant with Merin.

"We had a few pictures, not many, a few pictures in the house up," Merin said. "My mother was kind of stoic. It was hard for her always to talk about it. A lot of what I know I know from my aunts and other family members who would tell me stories."

Man plays slot machine in memory of his friend that had recently passed away and hits the jackpot for $7.2M!

BILOXI -- A Michigan man who played penny slots after his friend's funeral Friday hit a $7.2 million progressive jackpot at the Palace Casino.

Tyler Morris of Montague won $7,217,175.15 playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship, said Lisa Quirch, Palace Casino advertising and PR manager.

Morris typically plays craps, but felt compelled to try his luck on the penny slot machine in memory of a friend whose funeral he'd attended earlier in the day, she said.

One heart heals two families...recipient of new heart falls in love with donor's sister.

A heart has two functions in the human experience. There is the physical side (the engine that pumps blood throughout our bodies) and the less-scientifically bound belief that our hearts guide us in love.

In this rare case, the heart’s two functions have merged.

It’s the story of a young West Seattle man named Kellen Roberts who left his family too soon, passing away at the age of 22 in 2005.

Halfway across the country, a 17-year-old boy named Connor Rabinowitz was going through high school in Minnesota, well on his way to receiving a full ride baseball scholarship to college when he went to the doctor for a medical exam, and everything changed.

Connor was told he was in dire need of a heart transplant due to a genetic disease that enlarged and weakened his most crucial of organs. He needed a new heart, the doctors said, or he would not survive.

A top-rated high school catcher, Connor’s dream of playing professional baseball was finished.

“I had been such a strong, healthy young man who’d never been sick, on the verge of a baseball scholarship to the Division 1 school of my choice and one week later doctors were telling me I could die if I don’t receive a life saving heart transplant,” Connor said.