There’s plenty of bad news out there, so it’s good sometimes to highlight the many bright spots that might not get the visibility they deserve.
We’ll start in Fernley, Nevada, a small town east of Reno, where a 13-year-old boy sold his Xbox and did yard work to buy a car for his mother, a single mom.
Yes, he bought his mom a car.
William Rabillo is “a lawn mowing, yard cleaning, money making machine,” in the words of his mother, Krystal Preston. He went out to do a job recently, and when he came back, he said, “Mom, I bought you a car.”
She laughed, but he persisted.
“No mom, I’m serious. I bought you a car,” he told her. “Come on. We have to go.”
They went outside, where there was a woman waiting for them. She took them to her home, where there was a car waiting for them.
William, who wears his hair in a buzz cut and likes to zip down the sidewalk on a scooter, was looking through Facebook and saw a woman who wanted to sell her 1999 Chevy Metro for cheap. He contacted her and asked if he could trade his Xbox and yard work for the vehicle.
When he arrived with his mom, the paperwork and keys were waiting for her.
“I lost it. I bawled so bad. There’s no way. What 13-year-old do you know buys their mom a car? I don’t know any,” Preston told a local television station. “There’s no words I can express my gratitude and how proud I am.”
Now we’ll move to a much more serious event and a more traditional example of heroism — the kind of self-sacrificial bravery that we all hope we would exhibit when the chips are down.
It starts on a dark afternoon in Seattle late last month, when a man went on a shooting rampage after claiming he blacked out while drinking and playing video games.
His senseless acts of violence cost two lives. The carnage could have been even worse, but for the courage and grit of Metro bus driver Eric Stark.
Stark, a youth basketball coach and former pastor, was driving his bus through the Lake City neighborhood where the gunman was randomly firing on cars the afternoon of March 27.
One of his bullets hit Stark in the left side of his chest. While his mind might have turned briefly to his wife of more than 30 years, his five children or his two grandchildren, he quickly focused on the job at hand.
“I ducked down really quick for some cover, did like a two-second assessment of my injuries and figured well, I can breathe, I can think, I can see, and I can talk. So for me that was enough to go OK, I’m getting out of here, I’m going to get these people out of here. And the only way to do that was to back up,” Stark told KOMO television.
He wheeled his bus around and got away safely. None of his 12 passengers were injured.
A college friend of mine recounts that Stark was his youth pastor back in high school, 25 years ago.
“A truly fantastic gentleman,” my friend said about Stark. “This doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s a hero.”
And now we’ll turn back home, where longtime Toledo civic volunteer and veteran reserve police officer Randy Pennington was named a “Hometown Hero” by KIRO Radio last week.
Citing his military service, duties as paramedic and fire commissioner, plus his remarkable 33-year service as an unpaid reserve police officer, KIRO radio concluded, “The city of Toledo is fortunate to have such a civil servant... He is quite possibly the definition of a Hometown Hero — dedicating his life to giving back and making our communities better and our lives safer.”
Pennington’s service and smile are no surprise to the people of Lewis County, of course.
“I love it,” he said of his volunteer work in a 2015 Chronicle story, which noted that Penninghton is called “grandpa” by locals while doing checks.
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Speaking of people worthy of admiration, I’d like your help in starting a new occasional series in this column. I’d like to hear your nominations for people who are doing right by their families and communities — people who are solid and skilled in doing this life the right way.
I want to highlight these worthy individuals and figure out their secrets. What are they doing that works, and how can we borrow a little bit of that magic dust for ourselves?
I’m particularly interested in parents who are raising their kids right, equipping them to be confident, humble servant-leaders in this community and world.
Let me know. Let’s celebrate and learn from our local luminaries, one worthy man and woman at a time.
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Brian Mittge looks forward to hearing from you at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
