Sandwich Chain Take A Bite Out Of Homelessness

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Pret-A-Manger, the national sandwich shop chain, is taking its commitment to homelessness charities one step further by hiring 25 homeless youngsters.

Pret chief executive Clive Schlee told the London Evening Standard the scheme was built:

… on the company’s longstanding policy of distributing sandwiches and drinks to hostels and homelessness charities.

He said Pret decided it would be better to help stop people falling into homelessness in the first place “and the best way to do that is to give someone a job”.

The firm is working with eight organisations – including Shelter from the Storm in Islington, St Mary-le-Bow in the City, and St Mungo’s, which has hostels all over London – to find apprentices.

The new apprentices are taken on for a trial three month period, given £100 to buy jeans and leather shoes and paid the normal rate of £6.15 an hour plus a possible £1 an hour bonus. So far, three quarters of those who started apprenticeships now have full-time jobs with Pret.

The Standard interviewed one of the new Pret apprentices, James Woodin.

One said the work had transformed his life. James Woodin, 22, grew up on a rough estate in Bromley and has had a criminal record from the age of 13.

He said that despite staying out of trouble for almost two years, his time in jail left him unemployable: “I would get interviews but I knew my application form was getting thrown in the bin as soon as I walked out of the door. Now I love what I’m doing, I love the people I work with: they’re like family to me. The manager’s like a surrogate mother. I want to be sitting where Clive is sitting one day.”

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Palm Beach Man Is The Cat’s Meow!

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A California man has become a community hero to 250,000 starving feral cats – and their grateful neighbours.

Jim Strout spends every night patrolling the streets of Boynton Beach in Palm Beach County, California, in a car packed with cat food, feeding hundreds of hungry felines.

The area is overrun with feral cats. Mr Strout uses his nightly outings to both ensure that cats left to go wild by negligent owners don’t suffer, and to capture ‘unfixed’ cats and take them to the vet.

Mr Strout told WPTV’s Channel 5 News that he spends around $60,000 of his own money every year on his nightly missions of mercy.

According to the Channel 5 New report:

The Strouts are part of an underground network of volunteers who say they are keeping these animals from starving, all while keeping the Palm Beach County feral cat population down.

Heidi Nielsen, the Assistant Director of the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League in West Palm Beach, said that the explosive population of feral cats is a concern but she welcomes the help of volunteers like the Strouts.

Nine feral cats were among the felines that were spayed or neutered on Wednesday. Those nine procedures alone can help reduce the local feral cat population by tens of thousands.

“If you get them sterilized, the cat colony stabilizes. New cats do not move in and the colony reduces in sides through attrition,” said Nielsen.

Feral cats are brought to Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League by people like Strout and his wife, who alone captured, neutered and later released about 1,000 cats this last year. Most of these volunteers pay out-of-pocket for the procedures.

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Child Kidnapper Foiled by Local Hero

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Antonio Diaz Chacon risked his own life to rescue a six-year old girl, snatched off a New Mexico, U.S., street by a kidnapper.

After seeing a man grab the girl, pull her into a van and speed off, Mr. Chacon jumped in his truck and raced after the kidnapper, chasing him for 15 minutes across the city of Albuquerque. When he eventually forced the man – later identified as Phil Garcia – to crash, Mr. Chacon charged in and grabbed the girl from the kidnapper’s vehicle.

According to a report on August 16 by Alex Tomlin of CNN affiliate KOAT7 Albuquerque:

The hero, who risked his own life to rescue a neighbourhood girl he didn’t know, said he was only doing what was right.

Antonio Diaz Chacon has two girls of his own. He said when he saw the six-year-old forced into a mysterious van, he just reacted.

Antonio and his wife Martha … saw Garcia push the girl into a van.

“We have to save her,” Martha translated.

Antonio didn’t hesitate; he took off in his truck while Martha called 911.

She can be heard telling the dispatcher, “The man came running to us and said they stole our little girl.”

Antonio said he followed Garcia for about 15 minutes as he swerved in and out of neighborhoods and sped down busy streets.

Finally Garcia crashed, and Antonio went to grab the girl. Garcia also got out.

“When he was really scared was when the van stalled and he got off the van and my husband thought maybe he has a gun,” said Martha.

Garcia took off running … Antonio got the girl out of the van and put her in his truck.

Police later caught Garcia, who tried to hide what appeared to be a kidnap kit: a roll of duct tape and straps.

The little girl was reported to be bruised, and her clothes were ripped as she struggled with Garcia, even biting his fingers when he grabbed her.

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Norway Island Shooting Hero

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A German holidaymaker has emerged as the hero of the horrific Norwegian Island massacre that claimed the lives of more than 80 people.

According to the Daily Telegraph:

Marcel Gleffe was the first to race to the idyllic island of Utoeya, where more than 500 young people were attending a summer camp organised by AUF, the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party, as gunman Anders Behring Breivik opened fire.

Mr Gleffe, who was staying on a holiday campsite on the mainland, raced to his boat and took to the water immediately after hearing the shots and seeing plumes of smoke on the horizon.

Further on in the  Daily Telegraph’s Interview, Mr. Gleffe describes how he rescued scores of teenagers as bullets rained down from the killer’s guns.

“I just did it on instinct,” he said. “You don’t get scared in a situation like that, you just do what it takes. I know the difference between fireworks and gunfire. I knew what it was about, and that it wasn’t just nonsense.

“Cooperation with the police and rescue crews afterwards was very good, but it all came too late. The first time I was out I was all alone.”

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Mystery Good Samaritan Saves Man From Train Tracks

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A mystery Good Samaritan is being sought by the grateful man whose life he saved.

Thomas Holihan fell onto the tracks at an Altanta, Georgia, train station after passing out from heat stroke.

Mr Holihan told Atlanta’s 11 Alive news network he suddenly became dizzy and his legs gave out from under him, causing him to fall off the platform and onto the tracks, five feet below.

Disoriented and panic-stricken, Holihan said he struggled to climb back onto the platform with the train just minutes away.

“This Good Samaritan jumped down and after two or three attempts was able to hoist me up,” Holihan said.

After pulling him to safety, the Good Samaritan stayed just long enough to make sure Mr. Holihan was Ok, before jumping onto another train. Mr. Holihan says he has no idea of the man’s name, and never got a chance to thank him.

“God, bless you. I owe my life to you,” Holihan said. “I’d like to publicly thank you because it was an heroic effort.”

The drama was caught on a station security camera, but the rescuer’s identity is still unknown. He remembers his rescuer as a young African-American, in his early 20s, standing about 6-foot-4, weighing about 210 pounds.

Do you know him?

Let us know at findmyhero@kissbank.com and we’ll make sure he gets Kissed!

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