Orcas Island is an idyllic seaside vacation spot nestled between Seattle and Vancouver. Tourists flock there for scenic hikes, whale watching and a top-notch food scene. But true Islanders will tell you that life there isn’t always paradise. As Lee Horswill, co-owner of Brown Bear Baking, tells me “the island tests everyone who comes to...
Alone in a Baltimore, Maryland hospital room, Santorio Martin had just come out of surgery — previously undiagnosed stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma had devastated his immune system and attacked his spine—when a physician entered the room with a shattering prognosis. “He said, ‘We had to reconstruct your spine. I’m sorry to tell you, you will...
When Thando Dlomo first heard Oprah Winfrey was building a school in South Africa, she was living with her grandmother, who was working as a domestic worker. “We lived in the backyard of her employer’s house,” recalls Dlomo, now 27. “I went to a school in the white neighborhood, and there were very few girls...
For years, Quinton Harris barely saw his grandmother, the woman who raised him. As a young man, Harris, now 31, “I was running the streets, selling drugs,” he says. “I was hustling. Playing with guns, scheming.” It went against everything his grandmother taught him. “I used to refrain from going to see my grandmother because...
In Baltimore’s rat-infested alleys and abandoned lots, John Jones could—with a shovel, a broom and a trash can—make a game out of impossible-looking cleanup. “I’d get to a yard with trash piled six feet high and say to the crew, let’s see if we can get this done quicker than we did the last one,” recalls...
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Oprah Winfrey Scholar Micah Holmes took opportunity and turned it into inspiration not only for himself, but for dozens of struggling kids in his hometown: ‘If I’m Rising Up by Myself, I’m Not Doing Anything - It’s My Obligation to Give Back’ On any given Sunday - or Monday night, or really any night of the...