Fox News

Over 80 farms in the US and Canada have created "Peanuts"-themed attractions to honor Charles M. Schulz, the creator of beloved characters like Charlie Brown and Snoopy. The first "Peanuts" strip was released 75 years ago by Schulz when he was just 27 years old, eventually becoming syndicated in over 2,600 newspapers worldwide. Jill Schulz, his daughter, expressed gratitude for farmers dedicating their land to her father's legacy while joking about her own lack of a green thumb.

Why Are Farmers Across US and Canada Carving ‘peanuts’ Comic Characters in Corn Mazes?

When people talk about purpose, it often sounds like something enormous, the kind of calling that changes the world. But a new book argues the opposite. Purpose, it says, lives in the quiet places of everyday life, where small moments of kindness make us feel valued and help us value others.

In Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, author Jennifer Wallace explains that the need to matter, to feel seen and valued by others, is one of the most fundamental human drives. “After the drive for food and shelter, it is the motivation to matter that drives human behavior,” Wallace says. It shows up in our relationships, our workplaces, our communities, and in the ways we try to give back.

Research backs this up. People who feel valued and who feel able to add value to the world tend to experience better overall health, especially mental health. “The research is finding that it is linked with lower depression, lower anxiety, reduced risk of suicide,” Wallace says.

And it doesn’t require grand gestures. Wallace found that when she asked people, “When did you feel like you mattered?” the answers were almost always small things. A saved seat at a table. A colleague checking in after a difficult meeting. A neighbor dropping off soup when someone was sick. “We crave to matter in the day-to-day,” she says. “We crave to matter in the details of life.”

If you are trying to find purpose, Wallace suggests starting with small, concrete acts. Offer to walk an elderly neighbor’s dog. Check in on a single parent who might be stretched thin. At work, acknowledge your colleagues when their efforts help you succeed. “I’ve come to think of it as appreciating the doer behind the deed,” she says.

Those moments ripple outward. When someone feels valued, Wallace notes, they tend to pass that feeling forward, making mattering contagious.

Connection also helps people weather stress. In one study, participants were asked to estimate the steepness of a hill while standing alone or beside a friend. The hill looked less steep with a friend there. “Friendships act as a kind of shock absorber to stress,” Wallace says.

But people often hesitate to reach out during hard times, worried their struggles will push others away. Psychologists say the opposite is true. Sharing vulnerabilities makes us appear more authentic and brings people closer. Wallace calls it the “beautiful mess” effect.

When she faces challenges at work, she imagines that hill and asks herself, “Who can I bring next to me so that it will feel less steep?” She encourages others to do the same. Look for someone who has experienced a similar situation and invite them for coffee. Accept invitations when they come your way, and offer them freely.

Her book includes stories of people who reshaped their lives this way, like a woman going through a divorce who began hosting simple dinners with friends, or a burned-out teacher who started a weekly lunch with two colleagues and found it transformed her workdays.

Wallace also recommends a daily reflection practice. Each night, she writes down two things: When did I feel valued today? and Where did I add value today? The habit helps her end each day with clarity and gratitude.

Finding purpose, she argues, is not about chasing something bigger. It is about noticing the ways you matter to others and the small ways you make others feel that they matter too.

Small Acts, Big Meaning: New Book Says Purpose Comes From Everyday Moments of Feeling Valued

YR - IG @YorkParamedics

Born in Zimbabwe and raised in Canada, Logistics Technician Kelvin is bringing a unique and valued perspective to the York Region Paramedic team. This Black History Month, he reflects on how his heritage and work behind the scenes intersect to create a more equitable service. 

"In my current role, Black History Month reinforces the importance of equity, respect and accountability in the work we do behind the scenes to support frontline paramedics. Reliable logistics directly impacts patient care; it is essential that our systems, decisions and workplace culture serve all communities fairly and without bias." 

"Celebrating Black History Month has strengthened my understanding of my identity by allowing me to reflect on both where I come from and how I have been shaped by my experiences in Canada. Being born in Zimbabwe and raised in Canada has given me a dual perspective that I value deeply. This month creates space to acknowledge African history, resilience and cultural pride, while also recognizing the experiences of Black communities in Canada and the progress made through perseverance and advocacy." 

"It inspires me to be more intentional about supporting diversity and inclusion by recognizing that equitable paramedicine starts long before patient contact. This means advocating for respectful, bias-free processes, fostering a workplace culture where diverse backgrounds are valued and ensuring the systems we build enable us to serve every community with dignity and professionalism."

Instagram Introduces New Features To Enhance User Experience

Good News Network

An Indian teacher who has opened more than 800 learning centers for children who have never attended school has been awarded the 1 million dollar Global Teacher Prize from GEMS Education.

Rouble Nagi’s centers operate in more than 100 slums and villages, offering safe and welcoming spaces for children facing some of the toughest barriers to education, including child labour, early marriage, irregular attendance and a lack of basic infrastructure. Instead of treating those challenges as obstacles, she builds education around the realities of daily life. Schedules are flexible for working children. Lessons use recycled materials. Skills are taught in ways that show immediate value to families.

The results have been significant. Her programs have cut dropout rates by more than half and improved long term school retention for thousands of young people.

Nagi plans to put the 1 million dollar prize toward building a free vocational institute and a digital literacy training program to reach even more marginalized youth across India.

Her journey began in her early twenties when she was asked to lead an art workshop. “I met a child who’d never seen a pencil, and it was the turning point of my life,” she said. Over the next two decades, she helped bring more than one million children into the formal education system. Art has remained one of her most effective tools. Through the Rouble Nagi Art Foundation, she has turned blank and abandoned walls into large interactive murals that teach reading, math, science, hygiene, history and environmental awareness. These murals double as open air classrooms, bringing parents into the learning process and turning entire neighborhoods into partners in education.

“Rouble Nagi represents the very best of what teaching can be, courage, creativity, compassion and an unwavering belief in every child’s potential,” said Sunny Varkey, founder of the Global Teacher Prize and GEMS Education. “By bringing education to the most marginalized communities, she has not only changed individual lives, but strengthened families and communities.”

Now in its tenth year, the Global Teacher Prize is the largest award of its kind and is run in collaboration with UNESCO. Nagi was selected from more than 5,000 nominations and applications from 139 countries. “This moment reminds us of a simple truth: teachers matter,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education. “UNESCO is honored to celebrate teachers like you, who, through patience, determination, and belief in every learner, help children into school, an act that can change the course of a life.”

Nagi, who also wrote The Slum Queen, travels extensively across India to work directly with students and to mentor the educators leading her learning centers. She has recruited and trained more than 600 volunteer and paid teachers, creating a model that adapts to children academically, socially and economically.

Alongside her education work, she maintains a career as an internationally recognized artist. Through the Rouble Nagi Design Studio, she has created more than 850 murals and sculptures and exhibited in 200 shows worldwide. Her work is included in the President of India’s permanent collection.

“Her work reminds us that teachers are the most powerful force for progress in our world.”

This Teacher Transformed India's Slums Into Open-Air Classrooms, Wins $1M Prize

GoodGoodGood

Sustainability has become one of the loudest conversations in music. Fans are calling on artists to shrink their environmental footprint, from the way merch is made to the fuel that powers entire arenas. Every part of the industry carries a cost, and REVERB, a nonprofit that has been working on these issues for more than two decades, is focused on reducing it.

Since 2004, REVERB has helped “green” tours and venues, offset carbon emissions and raise over 16 million dollars for environmental causes. Chris Spinato, the organization’s director of communications, has watched the work grow without drifting from its original mission. Their roster now includes major touring names such as Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer and Jack Johnson, and their festival partnerships are expanding, but the approach remains steady. “We help partners identify their sustainability goals and then create custom programs to meet and usually exceed what they’re hoping to achieve,” Spinato told the Goodnewspaper.

A big part of that work happens on the road. For many tours, REVERB sends an on-site sustainability coordinator who travels with the band. “They’re sort of like a guitar tech, but instead of restringing and adjusting guitars, they’re making sure that sustainability efforts are happening,” Spinato said. Those efforts include reducing single use plastics, improving recycling, diverting waste from landfills and lowering carbon emissions. The same model now appears at festivals and large venue events.

Over the last decade, Spinato has seen significant shifts. Simple measures they once had to fight for, such as allowing reusable water bottles, installing refill stations and providing recycling bins, have become standard at many venues. Yet festivals remain a challenge. According to Musicians for Sustainability, concerts in the United States generate more than 116 million pounds of waste each year and emit 400,000 tons of carbon.

Cutting fossil fuel use is another priority. Through REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, artists and industry partners fund efforts to replace diesel generators with cleaner energy. “This effort has been entirely funded by artists and industry partners and is helping to rapidly decrease or eliminate carbon emissions and accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels,” Spinato said. In 2023, the program helped power Billie Eilish’s Lollapalooza headline set and Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion using solar charged battery systems instead of diesel.

Spinato has no illusions about the scale of the climate crisis, but he finds motivation in the collective effort behind this work. “Despite the challenges that still remain both in music and generally as we all face the worsening climate crisis, we have hope,” he said. “It’s not hope in the sense that we hope things get better. It’s a hope gained through taking action and seeing the millions of people that are working to create a better future for people and the planet.”

He also stresses that REVERB does not operate alone. Its impact depends on a wide network of staff, volunteers, partner organizations, artists and the fans who show up ready to participate. Concerts, he said, are uniquely powerful places to spark that engagement.

“It may be a little cliché, but music really is a universal language. It connects people in a way that really nothing else can,” Spinato said. Concerts bring people together around a shared love of an artist, he explained, and that atmosphere creates a natural opening for conversations about climate action. “What better place to talk to people about taking action for people and the planet!?”

The sustainability push is still evolving, but the momentum is real. As artists and fans continue to demand accountability, groups like REVERB are helping shift the industry toward practices that match the spirit of the music itself, energetic, collaborative and ready to build something better.

How Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews Band And Jack Johnson Lead The Way In Eco-Friendly Concert Tours

YR - Yr Vaughan

For ten years every September, cyclists from northern York Region, southern Simcoe County and beyond have come together for one of the region’s most anticipated traditions, the NewRoads LakeRide. Hosted by NewRoads Automotive Group and driven by the leadership of president Michael Croxon, the ride marked its final year in 2025, closing out the decade with a milestone the organizers had long hoped to reach.

Across ten years of fundraising, participants and supporters helped the event surpass 1 million dollars raised for Southlake Health. While the ride has supported a range of critical programs, its most profound impact has been on Southlake’s mental health services, helping to transform care for some of the community’s most vulnerable patients.

Earlier this January, Southlake Health Foundation president Jennifer Ritter and members of her team visited a NewRoads town hall to share the hospital’s gratitude. A custom cycling jersey was also presented to Croxon in recognition of his philanthropic leadership. “Our partnership with NewRoads Automotive Group, through the thoughtful and generous leadership of Michael Croxon, has been a point-of-pride for Southlake Health,” Ritter said. “Over the last 10 years, we have seen the NewRoads LakeRide grow and inspire cyclists across the region to fundraise and ride to make an impact on the health of our communities.”

She added that nowhere has that impact been felt more deeply than within the Mental Health Program. Funding from the LakeRide has helped create healing spaces tailored to the needs of patients, ensuring they have an environment that supports recovery.

In 2020, that support helped make possible the NewRoads Automotive Group Emergent Mental Health Assessment Unit, a dedicated space with six private assessment rooms for people experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2023, a new 12 bed adult inpatient unit opened, expanding Southlake’s capacity and providing light filled, purpose built spaces designed specifically for mental health care.

“As a psychiatrist caring for patients in Southlake’s mental health program, I know the important role that a peaceful and healing environment plays in enabling a patient to recover,” said Dr. Gaurav Mehta, physician leader of the program. He noted that patients are already benefiting from the improved and expanded spaces made possible through NewRoads’ support. “We’re so appreciative of our partners at NewRoads and participants and donors of the NewRoads LakeRide over the last 10 years for making this a reality for Southlake.”

Though 2025 marked the final year of the LakeRide under NewRoads’ leadership, the legacy of the event lives on through the care it helped strengthen. For information on supporting Southlake’s mental health program or updates on upcoming community fundraising events in 2026, visit southlakefoundation.ca.

Southlake Health Celebrates Final Popular Newmarket Fundraiser For Mental Health

What began as a simple chair volleyball game at a senior living community in Belton, Texas, has grown into a genuine friendship that crosses generations.

The seniors at Woodland Cottages, who proudly call themselves “The Hit Squad,” regularly square off against members of the Lake Belton High School volleyball team. The matches are lighthearted and energetic, filled with laughter, quick volleys and plenty of friendly banter.

“We just laugh and laugh when we practice,” said Hit Squad member Charlotte Wheeler.

The relationship has also moved well beyond the walls of the senior community. Residents recently traveled to one of the girls’ games, cheering from the stands and surprising eight senior athletes with personalized goodie bags during the school’s Senior Night celebration.

Students have embraced the connection just as warmly. They visit often, staying long after the games end to talk, share stories and build friendships. “I’m ready to get some wisdom and skills from those who know more than I do,” high schooler Thia Allsion told the Belton Journal.

The idea has spread quickly at school. After hearing about the games, the undefeated Lady Broncos basketball team asked to schedule their own chair volleyball match with residents.

The impact on the seniors has been clear. A Woodland Cottages spokesperson told GNN that residents are experiencing increased physical activity, stronger social engagement and a renewed sense of purpose. Families and staff say the change is easy to see in the residents’ excitement leading up to each match.

The story continues to grow through packed cheering sections, hugs exchanged after games and smiles that stretch across generations. It started with a simple game, but it has become something much bigger, a reminder of how powerful connection can be when communities find ways to bring people together.

These Texas Seniors and High School Athletes Built an Unlikely Friendship Through Chair Volleyball

Science Daily

For years, scientists have noticed something puzzling. People who live at high elevations, where the air holds far less oxygen, tend to develop diabetes at much lower rates than people at sea level. The pattern was clear. The biology behind it was not.

Researchers at Gladstone Institutes now say they have found the missing explanation. Their work shows that in low oxygen environments, red blood cells start pulling large amounts of sugar out of the bloodstream. They act like glucose sponges, helping keep blood sugar levels lower under conditions similar to the thin air found on the world's tallest peaks.

The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, reveal that red blood cells can change their metabolism when oxygen drops. This shift helps them deliver oxygen more efficiently throughout the body. At the same time, it reduces circulating blood sugar, offering a simple explanation for the lower diabetes risk seen at altitude.

"Red blood cells represent a hidden compartment of glucose metabolism that has not been appreciated until now," said senior author Isha Jain, PhD, a Gladstone Investigator, core investigator at Arc Institute, and professor of biochemistry at UC San Francisco. "This discovery could open up entirely new ways to think about controlling blood sugar."

Jain's lab has spent years studying hypoxia, the term for low oxygen levels in the blood, and how it shapes metabolism. In earlier mouse experiments, the team noticed that animals breathing low-oxygen air had sharply reduced blood glucose levels. After eating, they cleared sugar from their bloodstream almost instantly. That behavior is typically linked to lower diabetes risk. But the usual organs, including muscle, liver and brain, did not explain where all the sugar was going.

"When we gave sugar to the mice in hypoxia, it disappeared from their bloodstream almost instantly," said first author Yolanda Martí-Mateos, PhD. "We looked at muscle, brain, liver, all the usual suspects, but nothing in these organs could explain what was happening."

A different imaging approach uncovered the answer. Red blood cells, long viewed as simple oxygen couriers, were absorbing and using a large share of the glucose. Follow-up experiments confirmed it. Under hypoxia, mice produced more red blood cells, and each of those cells took in far more glucose than those formed in normal oxygen.

To understand how this worked, Jain partnered with Angelo D'Alessandro, PhD, at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Allan Doctor, MD, at the University of Maryland. Their work showed that when oxygen is limited, red blood cells use glucose to make a molecule that helps release oxygen to tissues. That process becomes especially important when oxygen is scarce.

"What surprised me most was the magnitude of the effect," D'Alessandro said. "Red blood cells are usually thought of as passive oxygen carriers. Yet, we found that they can account for a substantial fraction of whole body glucose consumption, especially under hypoxia."

The team also found that the metabolic benefits of prolonged hypoxia lasted weeks to months after mice returned to normal oxygen.

They then tested HypoxyStat, a new drug from Jain's lab that mimics the effects of low oxygen. HypoxyStat, taken as a pill, causes hemoglobin to hold onto oxygen more tightly, reducing delivery to tissues. In mouse models of diabetes, the drug reversed high blood sugar entirely and outperformed existing treatments.

"This is one of the first use of HypoxyStat beyond mitochondrial disease," Jain said. "It opens the door to thinking about diabetes treatment in a fundamentally different way, by recruiting red blood cells as glucose sinks."

The implications stretch beyond diabetes. D'Alessandro pointed to potential relevance for exercise physiology and trauma care. Traumatic injury often triggers severe oxygen deficits, and shifts in red blood cell metabolism could influence glucose availability and muscle performance. Trauma remains a leading cause of death among younger people, making this line of research especially important.

"This is just the beginning," Jain said. "There's still so much to learn about how the whole body adapts to changes in oxygen, and how we could leverage these mechanisms to treat a range of conditions."

The study, "Red Blood Cells Serve as a Primary Glucose Sink to Improve Glucose Tolerance at Altitude," appeared in Cell Metabolism on February 19, 2026. It was authored by teams from Gladstone Institutes, University of Maryland and University of Colorado Anschutz, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, private donors and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Scientists Discover How Red Blood Cells Reduce Diabetes Risk at High Altitudes

Artnet

British-born artist James Doran-Webb has built a career out of a material most people walk past without a second thought. Driftwood, worn by weather and time, is the backbone of his wildlife sculptures. Each one carries the texture of its past life and the personality he coaxes out of it. Next year, he will debut his first solo exhibition with Gladwell and Patterson at Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week 2026. The gallery, one of the oldest in the United Kingdom with locations in London and Stamford, will show his sculptures alongside Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings. The mix is meant to pull viewers into a space where his wooden animals blur the line between what is imagined and what feels real.

His path to this work started long before he ever picked up a piece of driftwood. Doran Webb worked as an antiques dealer and cabinet maker, restoring everything from carved hardwood furniture to Queen Anne pieces. Restoration demands careful problem-solving, choosing repairs that stay true to a piece’s history while giving it a longer life. That mindset carries directly into his sculptures.

In 1990, he founded a home décor and art company and began experimenting with building animals from different materials. In the early 2000s he created his first driftwood horse. He kept collecting pieces from beaches and forests. Over time, those piles of wood turned into a growing sculptural menagerie shaped by his attachment to the outdoors and the natural world.

Creating each animal takes patience and an ability to see possibilities in shapes that do not look like much at first glance. He searches for driftwood pieces that match the movement he wants, whether that is a horse mid-stride or a meerkat standing alert. In his view, the material is not dead at all. It is simply waiting for the right form. “One of the things I find most satisfying about my work is being able to take something that is dead and inanimate and transform it into something which is vital, that has movement and has life,” he said.

His work sits inside bigger conversations about sustainability and the ways artists use reclaimed materials. Driftwood shapes the structure of his animals, but it also shapes the meaning. These sculptures raise questions about what can be reused, how humans interact with nature and how discarded things gain new purpose. His subjects range from owls to meerkats to horses. Together they form a kind of ecosystem where each piece invites viewers to look closer and think harder about the relationship between people and the environments they alter.

At Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week, those creatures will share space with paintings from artists who worked more than a century ago. The pairing encourages viewers to explore how artists past and present portray the natural world. Doran Webb’s sculptures add another layer. Built from reclaimed wood, they are reminders of time, weather and resilience, yet they also carry a sense of play. It is a combination that has pushed his work toward international attention and now, toward his first solo exhibition with one of Britain’s oldest galleries.

How This Artist is Bringing Driftwood Creatures to Life

CNBC

Cat Goetze has been watching people drift back toward simpler habits. Less screen time, fewer apps, anything that feels a little calmer. At 29, she has turned that feeling into a fast-growing hardware business built around something many assumed was gone for good, a landline-style phone.

Her company, Physical Phones, brought in more than 789,000 dollars in sales in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The rise looks sudden from the outside. Goetze has been chipping away at the idea for years.

She first thought about a landline product in 2023 after trying to cut her own screen time. She kept thinking about the phone her family shared when she was a kid. "When I grew up, there was this booklet that the school sent out to all of the families in the school district that literally had all of the students' names and their home phone numbers," she said. She remembers prank calling classmates from that printed phone book.

She checked what it would take to install a landline again and balked at the 80 dollar monthly service she was quoted. That pushed her to think differently. With a technical background and an interdisciplinary degree in science, technology and society from Stanford, she wondered how hard it would be to connect a landline phone directly to her smartphone. She started tinkering and built a prototype.

In 2023, she posted a pink handset prototype to TikTok. She had almost no audience and the post produced no sales. "I was like, OK, whatever, that's fine. This was like a fun project," she said. "I wasn't really trying to make money off of it anyway."

By 2025, she had built an online following under the name CatGPT, where she talked about AI and digital wellness. She also saw more people voicing frustration with smartphone dependence. That reminded her of the prototype sitting on the shelf. So she posted it again.

The July 2025 video went viral with more than 8 million views across Instagram and TikTok. Physical Phones passed 120,000 dollars in sales in its first three days. "As a creator, your job is really to kind of hold an antenna out into the zeitgeist and pick up on what people want creatively, spiritually, emotionally," she said. Revisiting the idea at the right moment made all the difference.

Physical Phones connect to a smartphone over Bluetooth and act like a classic landline. When your cellphone rings, the landline rings. To make an outgoing call, you can dial directly on the set. If you do not remember phone numbers, you can pick up the handset and dial star to activate your phone’s voice assistant. It also works for audio calls on FaceTime and WhatsApp.

Pre-orders opened in July 2025 and fully funded the first production run, covering costs for warehousing, shipping, printing and hiring. The company sells three styles, a handset, a wall mount and a rotary version, priced between 90 and 110 dollars.

Goetze says the hardest part was manufacturing. She had never done it before and learned how much attention a hardware product demands. She worked with a manufacturer in Asia, which also meant losing a "whopping portion" of profits to tariffs under the Trump administration’s policy. Finalizing the first model took about two to three months.

Her goal was to deliver phones by December 2025 for Christmas. Shipping by cargo boat would have taken too long. The only way to hit the deadline was to fly the entire shipment from Asia to California by cargo plane. The cost was nearly 74,000 dollars, covering freight, customs and delivery fees. "It was a huge hit to our profit margin," she said. "But I also think that it's those kinds of decisions where you really stand up for your customer and you show them how much you care."

Once the shipment arrived, Goetze pulled together anyone she could find to help. Friends, family, colleagues and neighbors all came to the warehouse to pack and ship the products. The team prepared 4,000 orders for delivery across the United States in December 2025.

Physical Phones has now sold more than 7,500 devices. The company made about 439,000 dollars in profit in 2025, money Goetze reinvests into research and development and into her small team of four. She does not take a salary from the company and instead supports herself through her CatGPT media business, which includes branded content and partnerships.

She recently hired a CEO, Josh Silverman, who joined during the first production round and now runs day-to-day operations. In 2026, she hopes to expand into retail. The team is weighing whether to keep the drop model or move to a more traditional e commerce setup with steady inventory.

Goetze is also launching Cat Labs, a creator-first product studio focused on building new products, apps, websites and services. "As a creator founder," she said, "my zone of genius, if you will, comes from my ability to stick that cultural antenna up into the air and understand what my audience wants, and being able to predict and build what they want next."

For now, a retro-looking phone that pairs with a smartphone seems to be exactly what people are reaching for.

People Are Craving Simpler Tech, and a 29-year-old in Los Angeles Built a Business Around It

Sunny Skyz

An early morning fire in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, had all the makings of a tragedy. Flames tore through a wooden home shortly before 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19, burning so intensely that they threatened nearby structures, including a mobile home less than 20 feet away.

But before firefighters arrived, a 12-year-old girl inside the house made a choice that likely saved a life.

As the fire spread, one sibling dialed 911. In the recording, a young caller told the dispatcher, “We do have an injured.” When asked who was hurt, the child replied, “She has severe burns on her neck. She’s 72 and she’s crippled.”

According to Tyler McDow, director of Lawrence County Fire and Rescue, the elderly woman — who had limited mobility — made it outside only because the 12-year-old pulled her from the burning home. It happened before emergency crews reached the scene.

“That child made a decision to help somebody out of the house that some adults would have trouble overcoming the fear,” McDow said. “Obviously, she sustained some burns in doing so, so that tells you that the conditions inside the residence were very dangerous at the time, and so, obviously, she had to make the decision that somebody else’s life was more important than hers.”

First responders treated both the woman and the child on site before transporting them to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Officials said the woman suffered significant burns but was in stable condition. The girl sustained minor burns to her arms and legs.

In a press release, Lawrence County Fire and Rescue thanked the child for her bravery. “We are thankful for the actions of the child on scene at the time of the discovery of the fire. Her heroic efforts quite possibly saved a life this morning.”

What began as a terrifying blaze became a story of instinct, courage and a split-second choice that changed everything.

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