# data[].attributes.body
After an accident, UW student designs shoes that work for people with disabilities

# data[].attributes.body
A ballet program gives kids with disabilities the opportunity to participate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet strives for inclusion on stage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Larke Johnson, who has cerebral palsy, wants audiences to know that “nothing is impossible” as she performs in the Joffrey Ballet’s production of “The Nutcracker.” “It just takes determination and dedication to reach your goals,” she tells NBC News’ Kevin Tibbles.

# data[].attributes.headline
Yeardley Love and the One Love Foundation

# data[].attributes.subject
Yeardley Love and the One Love Foundation

# data[].attributes.body
The One Love foundations is started after a family loses their daughter to relationship violence

# data[].attributes.body
Kids who are refugees from Afghanistan have the opportunity to learn the game of chess

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bright Spot: Chess gives Afghan refugee children a taste of home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Afghan refugee children are adapting to a new life in the U.S. by playing a game that originated from their homeland.

# data[].attributes.headline
Journalist speaking out against Asian hate

# data[].attributes.subject
Journalist speaking out against Asian hate

# data[].attributes.body
A journalist uses her platform, and personal experiences, to combat Asian hate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Go back to China."

The painful insult embedded in these four words is familiar to many Asian Americans, regardless of their heritage. Sophia Li is no exception. Li was born in Minnesota and, apart from a brief period living with her grandparents in Shandong, China, she was raised in the United States. She first heard this hateful comment at a young age. More recently, when she began using her social media platforms to speak out against rising anti-Asian racism, xenophobic, hateful comments started flooding her account.

But Li, a vocal advocate for the environment and social justice, didn't let the haters stop her. Transforming negativity into positive change, Li donated $2 for every hateful comment she received to Apex for Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to providing mentoring and educational programs to underserved Asian and immigrant youth in New York City. Li also wrote an article for Vogue in February on why we should all be standing up against racism, and how to support the Asian American community.

Li is a journalist and director known for her work on the climate crisis and social issues. She is currently a board member of Slow Factory, an environmental nonprofit that seeks to build antiracist community and grow climate-positive global movements, and serves on the council of Intersectional Environmentalist, a resource hub with a mission to craft a more equitable and just future for all people and the planet.

In an interview with Asia Blog, Li talked about remembering the lessons of Black Lives Matter, the pitfalls of "oppression Olympics," the limits of social media in advocacy work, and more. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How has your upbringing - and your Asian American identity - influenced your work?
I think in becoming more self-aware of my Asian identity and embracing it as an adult, I've realized that, in fact, it's always been there. It's always influenced my work. I might not have realized it before because for so many years, I tried to assimilate as an "American" or "model minority." Or maybe I was trying to push it away. Now, it is actually my biggest pride point - my heritage and my upbringing and my parents.

If you've experienced any sort of every day racism, micro and macro levels of racism, you just become more empathetic. My profession is as a journalist and a storyteller, surfacing voices that may not be able to tell their own stories. And I think that my advocacy for climate justice and racial justice is because when I was younger, I had a really hard time adapting when I moved back from China to the U.S., and had to learn English. I felt like I didn't have a voice then.

I remember when I worked at Vogue, everyone would say I was a "people whisperer" because I was really good at getting people to open up. That's because for so long, when I was younger, I felt like I was silent. All I did was listen, and that actually helped hone my interview skills as a journalist later on.
What made you want to start using your platform to talk about anti-Asian hate?
I was infuriated that anti-Asian hate was being talked about within the Asian community - but when my friends would bring it up to outsiders, no one had heard anything about it. And I just realized we're siloed further and further in our own social bubbles, not only in the content we consume, but also the news that we are seeing. Anti-Asian hate crimes impact the collective, not just one community - and it affects everyone because it upholds institutions like white supremacy, white nationalism, and capitalism that Black Lives Matter and other movements have been trying to fight this entire year. Our fight is everyone's fight. Just as Black Lives Matter isn't just for the Black community, Stop Asian Hate isn't just for the Asian community. We can't fight Asian hate by ourselves.

Anti-Asian hate crimes impact the collective, not just one community - because it upholds institutions like white supremacy, white nationalism, and capitalism that Black Lives Matter and other movements have been trying to fight this entire year. Our fight is everyone's fight.

I spoke up because there were so many things that we were forgetting - lessons we learned last summer with racial justice and Black Lives Matter that we just weren't talking about. When I first brought up anti-Asian hate, I said "we can be pro-Black and pro-Asian without being pro-police." And I think that is a lesson that we have forgotten. At the very beginning when Stop Asian Hate was established, in January when anti-Asian violence was really spiking, there were a lot of calls for more policing. I wanted to remind everyone that all of these issues are so interconnected and intersectional. We can't forget everything we have already learned in the past year, when we've literally hurt our own communities by bringing in the police as an answer. It's an answer that has never served us before. The police have never served Asians before. When there were two men of Asian descent that were killed by police, the young man in Philadelphia and the Filipino American in California, it just showed that the solutions that we think we might have aren't serving our communities either.

I wanted to remind everyone: "Hey, we can approach this not as an entirely new thing, so let's incorporate what we've learned from other communities' oppression and the institutions in place and apply it to Asians as well." We must. We have to.

Some of Sophia Li's Favorite Asian-owned Businesses to Support

Asian American Girl Club - This was started by my Japanese American friend Ally Maki. They have this amazing t-shirt right now that says, "I'm from here," because everyone always asks Asian Americans, "Where are you from?" All the merchandise supports nonprofits advancing Asian justice and different organizations supporting the community.

Apex for Youth - They bring funding and education to underprivileged Asian communities. I think a lot of people don't know that Asians have the highest poverty rate in New York and also get the least amount of funding from the city. I was really surprised of the more than 3000 cases reported on Stop AAPI Hate, young people experienced the majority of anti-Asian harassment. When you're young, that pain starts really early and gets embedded in you. I think everything they've been doing to really give a safe space for these kids is incredible.

MáLà Project - This was my go-to restaurant. I ended up becoming close to the owner because I was there so much.

Jing Fong - I think I cried when I first heard Jing Fong closed. It's just such an institution. The amount of birthdays and Chinese New Year celebrations I've had there is insane.

Welcome to Chinatown - They help Chinatown businesses with support with the pandemic.

Chuan Tian Xia - I now live in Brooklyn really close to Sunset Park. So, I always go to all of the restaurants there. This is one Sichuan place that I love.

Chop Suey Club - This shop has the most curated, beautiful designers from Asia and China. I love that they're really trying to change the whole stigma and notion of what "made in China" means because these are really high production, beautiful, original pieces like clothes, jewelry, and home stuff.

Wwake - This is one of my favorite jewelry companies, a super sustainable brand. And Wing, the owner, is incredible and she's such an advocate in the sustainability space.

You've used the term "oppression Olympics" to caution communities of color from turning against each other. Can you talk more about what that term means and how you think marginalized groups can work together to fight systemic racism?
I use the term "oppression Olympics" because I think there's a lot of comparison happening through the media, the public eye, and individuals in both the Asian community and the Black community. And - this is the thing - we cannot compare experiences. Our lived experiences are nowhere near the same, and that's okay.

Racial injustice and racial experience should not be compared. Racial injustice everywhere has the same roots - but the range of lived racial experiences is also valid. Even within racial groups, if you're half-Black or African or African American, the experiences with oppression are so different too.

Within the Asian community, when we're talking about oppression, there are so many different experiences. The wealth disparity between Asians is the biggest. I think a lot of my Asian friends who were born and raised in South Korea, China, or Japan had never experienced racism from a Western society while growing up. It's a little bit difficult for them now, living in New York for only the past few years, to understand systemic racism, because as members of the majority in their Asian countries, they didn't grow up with it. Also, "Asian" is not a monolithic culture - there are so many ethnicities.

The more we compare our lived experiences, we put the focus back on who will win the "oppression Olympics." And that's not winning, at the end of the day. Someone saying "my painful experience is because my grandparents were slaves and your grandparents only had an Exclusion Act or exclusion law" is not focusing on what's really important. In the "oppression Olympics," the only winners are the judges - by that I mean systemic racism and white supremacy, the institutions that have gotten us to this place. When we engage in the "oppression Olympics," we are bypassing the entrenched history of Asian and Black solidarity. Asian and Black people have stood up for each other time and time again. Early in U.S. history, Frederick Douglass made a speech about Japanese and Chinese people affected by the Exclusion Act - at a time when he himself didn't have any rights. I think comparing experiences further divides us, which then feeds into these institutions.
Social media has become a powerful tool for raising awareness quickly. Outside of social media, what more can we be doing to affect long-term change in the fight against racism and anti-Asian hate?
I think that social media is the most entry-level form of advocacy and allyship. You can share a post on Instagram, but not be doing the work in your day-to-day life. Having those conversations with your own subconscious biases, preconceived notions, shortcomings, micro-aggressions, micro-racism - we all need to be doing that. I'm not saying that because I think everyone is racist - I'm saying that because we are all byproducts of a society that has operated on systemic racism for so long.

If I say, "I'm not racist because I'm Asian," then I am being completely ignorant of how the Western society I live in says I should hate fellow minority communities. If you grew up thinking you're not enough, or you should be a certain way, and these people should be this way - then of course, you're going to have subconscious biases. Having those conversations with ourselves is really crucial. Some people may not have the self-awareness or understanding to do so, because they're so deeply embedded in it.

I think people who say they aren't racist view racism as a binary - either you're a racist or you aren't. We need to be having conversations with those people, helping them understand that while they might have had this perspective, things are changing. We can show them nuances of what's happening in today's society, which might feel uncomfortable for them.

But that's the thing - being an ally is getting over your own discomfort for the greater cause. I think that's definitely the most impactful thing anyone can do as an individual. Being antiracist is a verb, not a noun. I practice antiracism because it's something that happens every day. It's like working out - you have to do it consistently. You don't work out once and get fit and healthy.

You can also take a bystander training course so if a racist incident ever happens to you or near you, you can intervene. Checking in on your Asian friends is also very important, because people forget that this is very emotionally heavy for the Asian community. Especially if you're a boss who manages a team. You can set that standard by saying to Asian colleagues: "You're seen and you're recognized for what's happening. I'm not going to bypass it because it's uncomfortable for me as a boss to ask you how you're doing as an Asian right now." That would make your employees feel more connected to the workplace.

I think that social media is the most entry-level form of advocacy and allyship. You can share a post on Instagram, but not be doing the work in your day-to-day life.

It's important to have those conversations outside of our social groups - such as our families and neighbors and other progressives - and advocate for it on a larger scale. To address systemic racism, we need systemic change. This is going to be a lifelong process where we need to close the equity gap between Asians. Asian females are the least likely to be promoted in Fortune 500 companies. That dynamic in business needs to change. We need to approach it from 360 degrees - equity, job opportunities, everything - while also addressing our own subconscious biases, first and foremost.
You call yourself a "climate optimist" and are a vocal advocate for the environment. How do climate justice and racial justice relate to each other?
They are so interconnected. It is scientifically proven that environmental racism is one of the biggest impacts of the climate crisis. The climate crisis affects the whole world, but the majority of people experiencing it are in the Global South - and, you know, most of Asia is part of the Global South. It's the Global North that has caused these really detrimental changes to the climate. Only 100 companies contribute 71 percent of greenhouse gases. And of those 100, a majority are from the Global North. That's just, at a broad level, how climate justice and racial justice are interconnected.

If we're talking about just the United States, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) are heavily represented in the poorest communities, which also have the highest levels of asthma, cancer, and other health problems, often because they're communities that are being taken advantage of by business interests. Living in these areas - where people can't afford to go anywhere else - has health repercussions. You look at Flint, Michigan - no running water, high percentage of BIPOC - and that's because of the behavior of the industries there. You look at the South Bronx - it's called "asthma alley" for a reason. It has the highest levels of asthma anywhere in the world, because there's such a high level of industrial production happening in the South Bronx. The researchers for this podcast I'm about to do were telling me that they interviewed a girl who lives in the South Bronx - she was in the third grade, or something - who told them that she would go into a classroom and 80 percent of her classmates would be out sick because of breathing problems or asthma. So those are just a few examples on a broad level, and more in our backyard, of environmental racism and how climate and racial justice are so interconnected.
What message would you give to Asians and Asian Americans who are afraid of the attacks?
I would want to say that we can't let fear affect how we operate in the world as Asians. When you see these headlines about the skyrocketing of hate crimes against Asians, it makes you a little bit nervous to go outside. Of course, I'm sure every Asian has their own experience with verbal assaults, attacks, and discrimination during the past year. The journalist Kimmy Yam reported that more Asian American kids are staying home from school, choosing digital school. I think because they don't want to experience racism ... they're scared. And that just made me so sad.

We need to be careful; we need to be safe. I don't want to encourage people to go outside if they don't feel comfortable doing so. But we can't let the fear get to us. When the media finally started reporting on the attacks, it was almost framed like the only thing we should be thinking of is that we were being targeted‚ when actually I would want people instead of being afraid, to find their Asian joy and really make that the priority. I think fear has overtaken so many. I know so many Asian friends who don't ride the subway, for example. There's always going to be some danger, but if we give in to the fear, then that doesn't produce any solutions. Staying at home doesn't produce any wins for our community.

"Go back to China."

The painful insult embedded in these four words is familiar to many Asian Americans, regardless of their heritage. Sophia Li is no exception. Li was born in Minnesota and, apart from a brief period living with her grandparents in Shandong, China, she was raised in the United States. She first heard this hateful comment at a young age. More recently, when she began using her social media platforms to speak out against rising anti-Asian racism, xenophobic, hateful comments started flooding her account.

But Li, a vocal advocate for the environment and social justice, didn't let the haters stop her. Transforming negativity into positive change, Li donated $2 for every hateful comment she received to Apex for Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to providing mentoring and educational programs to underserved Asian and immigrant youth in New York City. Li also wrote an article for Vogue in February on why we should all be standing up against racism, and how to support the Asian American community.

Li is a journalist and director known for her work on the climate crisis and social issues. She is currently a board member of Slow Factory, an environmental nonprofit that seeks to build antiracist community and grow climate-positive global movements, and serves on the council of Intersectional Environmentalist, a resource hub with a mission to craft a more equitable and just future for all people and the planet.

In an interview with Asia Blog, Li talked about remembering the lessons of Black Lives Matter, the pitfalls of "oppression Olympics," the limits of social media in advocacy work, and more. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How has your upbringing - and your Asian American identity - influenced your work?
I think in becoming more self-aware of my Asian identity and embracing it as an adult, I've realized that, in fact, it's always been there. It's always influenced my work. I might not have realized it before because for so many years, I tried to assimilate as an "American" or "model minority." Or maybe I was trying to push it away. Now, it is actually my biggest pride point - my heritage and my upbringing and my parents.

If you've experienced any sort of every day racism, micro and macro levels of racism, you just become more empathetic. My profession is as a journalist and a storyteller, surfacing voices that may not be able to tell their own stories. And I think that my advocacy for climate justice and racial justice is because when I was younger, I had a really hard time adapting when I moved back from China to the U.S., and had to learn English. I felt like I didn't have a voice then.

I remember when I worked at Vogue, everyone would say I was a "people whisperer" because I was really good at getting people to open up. That's because for so long, when I was younger, I felt like I was silent. All I did was listen, and that actually helped hone my interview skills as a journalist later on.
What made you want to start using your platform to talk about anti-Asian hate?
I was infuriated that anti-Asian hate was being talked about within the Asian community - but when my friends would bring it up to outsiders, no one had heard anything about it. And I just realized we're siloed further and further in our own social bubbles, not only in the content we consume, but also the news that we are seeing. Anti-Asian hate crimes impact the collective, not just one community - and it affects everyone because it upholds institutions like white supremacy, white nationalism, and capitalism that Black Lives Matter and other movements have been trying to fight this entire year. Our fight is everyone's fight. Just as Black Lives Matter isn't just for the Black community, Stop Asian Hate isn't just for the Asian community. We can't fight Asian hate by ourselves.

Anti-Asian hate crimes impact the collective, not just one community - because it upholds institutions like white supremacy, white nationalism, and capitalism that Black Lives Matter and other movements have been trying to fight this entire year. Our fight is everyone's fight.

I spoke up because there were so many things that we were forgetting - lessons we learned last summer with racial justice and Black Lives Matter that we just weren't talking about. When I first brought up anti-Asian hate, I said "we can be pro-Black and pro-Asian without being pro-police." And I think that is a lesson that we have forgotten. At the very beginning when Stop Asian Hate was established, in January when anti-Asian violence was really spiking, there were a lot of calls for more policing. I wanted to remind everyone that all of these issues are so interconnected and intersectional. We can't forget everything we have already learned in the past year, when we've literally hurt our own communities by bringing in the police as an answer. It's an answer that has never served us before. The police have never served Asians before. When there were two men of Asian descent that were killed by police, the young man in Philadelphia and the Filipino American in California, it just showed that the solutions that we think we might have aren't serving our communities either.

I wanted to remind everyone: "Hey, we can approach this not as an entirely new thing, so let's incorporate what we've learned from other communities' oppression and the institutions in place and apply it to Asians as well." We must. We have to.

Some of Sophia Li's Favorite Asian-owned Businesses to Support

Asian American Girl Club - This was started by my Japanese American friend Ally Maki. They have this amazing t-shirt right now that says, "I'm from here," because everyone always asks Asian Americans, "Where are you from?" All the merchandise supports nonprofits advancing Asian justice and different organizations supporting the community.

Apex for Youth - They bring funding and education to underprivileged Asian communities. I think a lot of people don't know that Asians have the highest poverty rate in New York and also get the least amount of funding from the city. I was really surprised of the more than 3000 cases reported on Stop AAPI Hate, young people experienced the majority of anti-Asian harassment. When you're young, that pain starts really early and gets embedded in you. I think everything they've been doing to really give a safe space for these kids is incredible.

MáLà Project - This was my go-to restaurant. I ended up becoming close to the owner because I was there so much.

Jing Fong - I think I cried when I first heard Jing Fong closed. It's just such an institution. The amount of birthdays and Chinese New Year celebrations I've had there is insane.

Welcome to Chinatown - They help Chinatown businesses with support with the pandemic.

Chuan Tian Xia - I now live in Brooklyn really close to Sunset Park. So, I always go to all of the restaurants there. This is one Sichuan place that I love.

Chop Suey Club - This shop has the most curated, beautiful designers from Asia and China. I love that they're really trying to change the whole stigma and notion of what "made in China" means because these are really high production, beautiful, original pieces like clothes, jewelry, and home stuff.

Wwake - This is one of my favorite jewelry companies, a super sustainable brand. And Wing, the owner, is incredible and she's such an advocate in the sustainability space.

You've used the term "oppression Olympics" to caution communities of color from turning against each other. Can you talk more about what that term means and how you think marginalized groups can work together to fight systemic racism?
I use the term "oppression Olympics" because I think there's a lot of comparison happening through the media, the public eye, and individuals in both the Asian community and the Black community. And - this is the thing - we cannot compare experiences. Our lived experiences are nowhere near the same, and that's okay.

Racial injustice and racial experience should not be compared. Racial injustice everywhere has the same roots - but the range of lived racial experiences is also valid. Even within racial groups, if you're half-Black or African or African American, the experiences with oppression are so different too.

Within the Asian community, when we're talking about oppression, there are so many different experiences. The wealth disparity between Asians is the biggest. I think a lot of my Asian friends who were born and raised in South Korea, China, or Japan had never experienced racism from a Western society while growing up. It's a little bit difficult for them now, living in New York for only the past few years, to understand systemic racism, because as members of the majority in their Asian countries, they didn't grow up with it. Also, "Asian" is not a monolithic culture - there are so many ethnicities.

The more we compare our lived experiences, we put the focus back on who will win the "oppression Olympics." And that's not winning, at the end of the day. Someone saying "my painful experience is because my grandparents were slaves and your grandparents only had an Exclusion Act or exclusion law" is not focusing on what's really important. In the "oppression Olympics," the only winners are the judges - by that I mean systemic racism and white supremacy, the institutions that have gotten us to this place. When we engage in the "oppression Olympics," we are bypassing the entrenched history of Asian and Black solidarity. Asian and Black people have stood up for each other time and time again. Early in U.S. history, Frederick Douglass made a speech about Japanese and Chinese people affected by the Exclusion Act - at a time when he himself didn't have any rights. I think comparing experiences further divides us, which then feeds into these institutions.
Social media has become a powerful tool for raising awareness quickly. Outside of social media, what more can we be doing to affect long-term change in the fight against racism and anti-Asian hate?
I think that social media is the most entry-level form of advocacy and allyship. You can share a post on Instagram, but not be doing the work in your day-to-day life. Having those conversations with your own subconscious biases, preconceived notions, shortcomings, micro-aggressions, micro-racism - we all need to be doing that. I'm not saying that because I think everyone is racist - I'm saying that because we are all byproducts of a society that has operated on systemic racism for so long.

If I say, "I'm not racist because I'm Asian," then I am being completely ignorant of how the Western society I live in says I should hate fellow minority communities. If you grew up thinking you're not enough, or you should be a certain way, and these people should be this way - then of course, you're going to have subconscious biases. Having those conversations with ourselves is really crucial. Some people may not have the self-awareness or understanding to do so, because they're so deeply embedded in it.

I think people who say they aren't racist view racism as a binary - either you're a racist or you aren't. We need to be having conversations with those people, helping them understand that while they might have had this perspective, things are changing. We can show them nuances of what's happening in today's society, which might feel uncomfortable for them.

But that's the thing - being an ally is getting over your own discomfort for the greater cause. I think that's definitely the most impactful thing anyone can do as an individual. Being antiracist is a verb, not a noun. I practice antiracism because it's something that happens every day. It's like working out - you have to do it consistently. You don't work out once and get fit and healthy.

You can also take a bystander training course so if a racist incident ever happens to you or near you, you can intervene. Checking in on your Asian friends is also very important, because people forget that this is very emotionally heavy for the Asian community. Especially if you're a boss who manages a team. You can set that standard by saying to Asian colleagues: "You're seen and you're recognized for what's happening. I'm not going to bypass it because it's uncomfortable for me as a boss to ask you how you're doing as an Asian right now." That would make your employees feel more connected to the workplace.

I think that social media is the most entry-level form of advocacy and allyship. You can share a post on Instagram, but not be doing the work in your day-to-day life.

It's important to have those conversations outside of our social groups - such as our families and neighbors and other progressives - and advocate for it on a larger scale. To address systemic racism, we need systemic change. This is going to be a lifelong process where we need to close the equity gap between Asians. Asian females are the least likely to be promoted in Fortune 500 companies. That dynamic in business needs to change. We need to approach it from 360 degrees - equity, job opportunities, everything - while also addressing our own subconscious biases, first and foremost.
You call yourself a "climate optimist" and are a vocal advocate for the environment. How do climate justice and racial justice relate to each other?
They are so interconnected. It is scientifically proven that environmental racism is one of the biggest impacts of the climate crisis. The climate crisis affects the whole world, but the majority of people experiencing it are in the Global South - and, you know, most of Asia is part of the Global South. It's the Global North that has caused these really detrimental changes to the climate. Only 100 companies contribute 71 percent of greenhouse gases. And of those 100, a majority are from the Global North. That's just, at a broad level, how climate justice and racial justice are interconnected.

If we're talking about just the United States, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) are heavily represented in the poorest communities, which also have the highest levels of asthma, cancer, and other health problems, often because they're communities that are being taken advantage of by business interests. Living in these areas - where people can't afford to go anywhere else - has health repercussions. You look at Flint, Michigan - no running water, high percentage of BIPOC - and that's because of the behavior of the industries there. You look at the South Bronx - it's called "asthma alley" for a reason. It has the highest levels of asthma anywhere in the world, because there's such a high level of industrial production happening in the South Bronx. The researchers for this podcast I'm about to do were telling me that they interviewed a girl who lives in the South Bronx - she was in the third grade, or something - who told them that she would go into a classroom and 80 percent of her classmates would be out sick because of breathing problems or asthma. So those are just a few examples on a broad level, and more in our backyard, of environmental racism and how climate and racial justice are so interconnected.
What message would you give to Asians and Asian Americans who are afraid of the attacks?
I would want to say that we can't let fear affect how we operate in the world as Asians. When you see these headlines about the skyrocketing of hate crimes against Asians, it makes you a little bit nervous to go outside. Of course, I'm sure every Asian has their own experience with verbal assaults, attacks, and discrimination during the past year. The journalist Kimmy Yam reported that more Asian American kids are staying home from school, choosing digital school. I think because they don't want to experience racism ... they're scared. And that just made me so sad.

We need to be careful; we need to be safe. I don't want to encourage people to go outside if they don't feel comfortable doing so. But we can't let the fear get to us. When the media finally started reporting on the attacks, it was almost framed like the only thing we should be thinking of is that we were being targeted‚ when actually I would want people instead of being afraid, to find their Asian joy and really make that the priority. I think fear has overtaken so many. I know so many Asian friends who don't ride the subway, for example. There's always going to be some danger, but if we give in to the fear, then that doesn't produce any solutions. Staying at home doesn't produce any wins for our community.

Some of Sophia Li's Favorite Asian-owned Businesses to Support

Asian American Girl Club - This was started by my Japanese American friend Ally Maki. They have this amazing t-shirt right now that says, "I'm from here," because everyone always asks Asian Americans, "Where are you from?" All the merchandise supports nonprofits advancing Asian justice and different organizations supporting the community.

Apex for Youth - They bring funding and education to underprivileged Asian communities. I think a lot of people don't know that Asians have the highest poverty rate in New York and also get the least amount of funding from the city. I was really surprised of the more than 3000 cases reported on Stop AAPI Hate, young people experienced the majority of anti-Asian harassment. When you're young, that pain starts really early and gets embedded in you. I think everything they've been doing to really give a safe space for these kids is incredible.

MáLà Project - This was my go-to restaurant. I ended up becoming close to the owner because I was there so much.

Jing Fong - I think I cried when I first heard Jing Fong closed. It's just such an institution. The amount of birthdays and Chinese New Year celebrations I've had there is insane.

Welcome to Chinatown - They help Chinatown businesses with support with the pandemic.

Chuan Tian Xia - I now live in Brooklyn really close to Sunset Park. So, I always go to all of the restaurants there. This is one Sichuan place that I love.

Chop Suey Club - This shop has the most curated, beautiful designers from Asia and China. I love that they're really trying to change the whole stigma and notion of what "made in China" means because these are really high production, beautiful, original pieces like clothes, jewelry, and home stuff.

Wwake - This is one of my favorite jewelry companies, a super sustainable brand. And Wing, the owner, is incredible and she's such an advocate in the sustainability space.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sophia Li on Combating Anti-Asian Hate: 'Our Fight Is Everyone's Fight'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Go back to China." The painful insult embedded in these four words is familiar to many Asian Americans, regardless of their heritage. Sophia Li is no exception. Li was born in Minnesota and, apart from a brief period living with her grandparents in Shandong, China, she was raised in the United States.

# data[].attributes.body
Teens organize "Queer Prom" for LGBTQ+ classmates as a safe space

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Two teens host a ‘Queer Prom’ for LGBTQ+ students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Seniors here are asked to plan a project around solving a problem, and Jocelyn Anglesey is building hers, around building community for teens like her.

# data[].attributes.body
A family tragically loses their kids: 2 girls and a boy in a car accident... but later give birth to triplets... also 2 girls and a boy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Three months after the accident, Chris and Lori decided to try to have more children. "We always described ourselves at that point as 'parents without children,'" Chris says. "I mean, when you have three children that young, your whole lives are dedicated to them and you love it."

For medical reasons, the Cobles tried in vitro fertilization. On their first try, they started with 10 eggs. Three were successfully fertilized-two girls and a boy. "We were only going to put two back in, but once we found out that it was two girls and a boy, we took that as a sign from above," Lori says.

Almost exactly a year after Kyle, Emma and Katie died, Lori gave birth to triplets-Ashley, Ellie and Jake!

While Ashley, Ellie and Jake's birth is a miracle, Lori and Chris still grieve their lost children. "They'll never replace Kyle, Emma and Katie," Lori says. "But the joy is back in the house. It's back in our hearts. They fill our lives again with love and happiness and laughter."

The triplets already know about their siblings because there are still pictures on the walls and Lori and Chris often talk about them. "They know that they have two sisters and a brother in heaven," Lori says. "And we go to the cemetery and we have picnics."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three months after the accident, Chris and Lori decided to try to have more children. "We always described ourselves at that point as 'parents without children,'" Chris says. "I mean, when you have three children that young, your whole lives are dedicated to them and you love it."

# data[].attributes.body
One girl's story leads to additional protections for undocumented kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My family and I came to this country from Ecuador when I was 13 in 1998. We fled poverty as Ecuador was in the middle of an economic and political crisis. Without jobs, our family had almost nothing to pay for school and food. Both my parents dreamed of going to college, but came from poor, working-class backgrounds. It was not going to happen.

When we moved to New York, it was their dream for their children to have not only food and shelter but also education. This was my dream, too.

One day, I met with our college counselor and one of the first questions she asked me was whether I had a Social Security number or a green card, to which I responded, no.

Then she asked me whether my parents had them. My response was, again, no. She told me that I couldn't go to college because I was undocumented and that she couldn't help me. She then said, "next!", calling over the next student

I was heartbroken.

My future got a second chance

I went home crying and shared the news with my mom. After dropping my book bag on the floor, I threw myself in bed and kept crying. But my mom said if I didn't go back to school and get help from someone else, then she would come to school herself. As a teenager, I was mortified.

One of my English-as-a-second-language teachers supported me and encouraged me to apply for the City University of New York (CUNY), which after 9/11 eliminated in-state tuition for undocumented students. I also found community organizations and labor unions who were advocating for students like me. I was amazed to read in the local newspapers that undocumented students were fasting to pressure state legislators and the governor to pass a law changing this policy.
Read the Women of the Century interview with USA TODAY: Cristina Jiménez Moreta helped get DACA, now she helps young immigrants find their voice
In 2002, a few weeks before my first semester in college, New York Gov. George Pataki signed a new law allowing in-state tuition for students regardless of immigration status. I cried of happiness that I would be able to go to college.

Even though I had in-state tuition, I couldn't get financial aid. So my mom took on a second job at a nail salon, in addition to cleaning houses, and I sold Avon and cleaned houses.

In those years, I got involved with two deportation defense cases - Kamal Essaheb in New York and Marie Gonzalez in Missouri. They got caught up in the post-9/11 immigration enforcement regime. We amplified their stories in the media, pushed members of Congress to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and mobilized community members to call ICE and members of Congress. Marie and Kamal were able to stay, but it was a bittersweet because Marie's parents were deported.

Deportation: A terrible realization

In 2006, one of my greatest fears became a reality. I was awakened by a call in the early morning and learned that Walter, my close friend, was in a detention camp and would be deported.

I felt overwhelmed by the possibility that I may not see Walter again. Walter was from Guatemala and came to this country with his family when he was 11 years old. Walter was the first undocumented student I met in college. In awe, I admired how he courageously spoke in public about being undocumented. I remembered Walter helping me to figure out how to get a cellphone as an undocumented person and how to navigate finding jobs. We became really close and together started an effort to organizing undocumented students in New York.
Many immigrants live in fear, lack basic rights: We have the power to change the system.
Within a 100 mile radius of U.S. borders, Customs and Border Patrol has the power to ask anyone about their immigration status. Walter was on an Amtrak train traveling from New York to Chicago, and border agents went into cars racially profiling men of color. Walter was handcuffed and detained.

After five days of engaging with many senators, urging them to place phone calls to ICE arguing that he should have legal representation and be allowed to make a case that he should stay, we got Walter out. That experience was a turning point.

Historic change and a bright future

It was this experience that led me to commit to organizing immigrant youth and families to ensure that all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, can live freely.

Walter and I and other undocumented young people co-founded United We Dream in 2008. Our organizing and advocacy led to the historic victory of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which we campaigned and advocated for by leading rallies, marches, storytelling and civil disobedience. DACA protects 650,000 young people from deportation, like my brother Jonathan.

But this administration has attempted to dismantle DACA and implemented policies that have separated thousands of children from their parents, put kids in cages, deported people en masse.

I'm sure you can hear in my story how much policies voted on by decision-makers and elected officials have a direct impact on our lives. Which is why I'm so passionate about this election. After more than 20 years in this country, Walter and I became citizens last year and are voting in our first presidential election.

Walter and I not only became committed to building a movement for immigrant justice; we also fell in love and are committed to each other.

This November, I'll cast my vote to defend my immigrantparents, my brother who has DACA, and millions of people impacted by deportation, detention and family separation.
Cristina Jiménez Moreta is co-founder of United We Dream, a 2017 MacArthur Fellow and one of USA TODAY's Women of the Century. Follow her on Twitter: @CrisAlexJimenez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Undocumented but unafraid: How my immigrant story led to DACA protections for young people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My family and I came to this country from Ecuador when I was 13 in 1998. We fled poverty as Ecuador was in the middle of an economic and political crisis. Without jobs, our family had almost nothing to pay for school and food.

# data[].attributes.headline
Former gang member becomes award-winning teacher

# data[].attributes.subject
Former gang member becomes award-winning teacher

# data[].attributes.body
A former gang member becomes an educator and is named teacher of the year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Former gang member is named Missouri’s Teacher of the Year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Darrion Cockrell hated school as a child, as he navigated the the foster care system. He joined a gang by age 10.

# data[].attributes.body
After a tragic school shooting, a multi-faceted organization is created to combat gun violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"The Sandy Hook Promise Foundation is one of the most effective and efficient charities I have ever come across. I give as freely of my time as I can to educate everyone I can that gun violence is preventable. #ProtectOurKids"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sandy Hook Promise trains students and adults to know the signs of gun violence so that no parent experiences the tragic, preventable loss of their child.

# data[].attributes.body
The founder of Dave's Killer Bread started out his journey as an addict and criminal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

As an entrepreneur, you are used to juggling multiple tasks and navigating choppy waters. Eventually, you grow accustomed to surviving in a world of organized chaos. To you, setbacks are just part of the process, but what if one of those setbacks happened to be a 15-year stint in a penitentiary? Would you be able to maintain that same enthusiasm that keeps you going right now?

Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meet Dave Dahl, founder of Dave's Killer Bread. By his own admission, Dahl will tell you that he suffered from low self-esteem, and up until 2001, made a series of poor life choices. After serving a decade-and-a-half sentence for possession of drugs, robbery, burglary and assault, he returned home in 2001 to the family bakery business, which was built by his father and run by his brother. Together, he and his brother sought out to develop a better bread in hopes of changing lives, one loaf at a time.

Fast forward to 2015, and Flowers Foods agreed to purchase "Dave's Killer Bread" for $275 million. Let's review the five things Dahl did to take his bread company from local farmers markets to the global market.
Related: A Family Business With an Open-Minded Hiring Policy
1. Self-forgiveness

Dave's story is one of second chances. Actually, it's one of multiple chances. Prior to reuniting with his brother and joining the family business, he had been incarcerated four times. The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter how many times you've screwed; there's always an opportunity to start anew. You may have failed yesterday, but that doesn't mean you have to carry that burden today. Take solace in knowing that most people won't remember your missteps. Want to know why? They're too busy worrying about their own.

2. Never coasting

One of the biggest reasons Dave's Killer Bread was such a hit was because other breadmakers simply hadn't been as innovative. You can argue that his non-GMO ingredients are better, but on the surface, all Dahl did was add more whole grains and unique toppings to the exterior than other manufacturers were offering. The big dogs stopped being creative. The biggest mistake you can make as an entrepreneur is to coast.
Related: Five Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Need To Think Out of the Box
3. Remaining driven

Great ideas come as you work on something you're passionate about. There is a saying by Gabby Bernstein: "Allow your passion to become your purpose, and one day it will become your profession." Dahl's passion helps him fill that hole in his life. He wanted to bake a loaf of bread with rich texture and natural whole grain that people would love Passion gives you motivation, direction and purpose in life.

4. Taking a leap of faith

One of the biggest challenges Dave's company faced was moving into a facility that cost his brother Glenn $1.5 million. It was a huge risk for them to take, knowing that they had no cash flow support to sustain such a purchase, and it was all based on future expectations. Eventually, they did see significant growth in the business, even expanding and hiring more employees. Dave's hard work, dedication, perseverance and continued focus on his purpose helped him take this risk.

There will be moments in your own entrepreneurial endeavour where you will be forced to operate outside of your comfort zone. Eventually, you learn how to operate with butterflies in your stomach, and it becomes business as usual.
Related: Why You Need to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
5. Being a mad scientist

Dave experimented with different types of bread and countless ingredients. He researched what was trending and what was not. He wasn't afraid of letting his product out in the market to receive feedback. He knew that some of his ideas would fail. He also knew that some of his ideas would hit, and when they did, they were home runs. Customers were repeatedly asked for his bread, and word got out so fast that it became famous in the community.

Your business ideas won't work if you sit and think about them all day. You have to go out, experiment and execute your ideas, no matter just how crazy they may sound.

Dave Dahl wasn't born an entrepreneur. His early life was a struggle, and he long clung to a victim mentality. But Dave's Killer Bread is a perfect example of how you can turn tragedy into triumph. It wasn't too late for Dahl, even after 15 years behind bars, and it isn't too late for you. Apply these same five strategies that he used, and go build your own multi-million dollar empire.

Entrepreneur Editors' Picks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Founder of Dave's Killer Bread Went From Jail to Selling His Business for $275 Million

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As an entrepreneur, you are used to juggling multiple tasks and navigating choppy waters. Eventually, you grow accustomed to surviving in a world of organized chaos. To you, setbacks are just part of the process, but what if one of those setbacks happened to be a 15-year stint in a penitentiary?

# data[].attributes.headline
Victor Medina and the TBI Warrior Foundation

# data[].attributes.subject
Victor Medina and the TBI Warrior Foundation

# data[].attributes.body
A vetran suffers a traumatic brain injury but is determined to help others, especially other vetrans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Victor L. Medina — TBI Warrior Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
TBI Warrior Foundation’s President and Founder SFC(Ret.) Victor L. Medina, MRC, CRC. His bio in this page.

# data[].attributes.body
The father/son combo have shared their experiences of battling addiction and have helped destigmatize addiction and help people access treatment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Though watching some of their worst moments re-enacted has been difficult, Nic, left, and David Sheff say they appreciate how lucky they were to survive. Credit... Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

Nic Sheff was sitting next to his father, David, as he recounted one of the lowest moments in his life. It was the time when Nic, college-aged and living in his father's home, observed his little brother, Jasper, and their younger sister, Daisy, fighting over a few missing dollars that Jasper accused Daisy of stealing from him. All along, Nic knew that he was the thief and that he'd robbed his brother to finance his own methamphetamine habit.

Having recently watched this re-enacted in a movie, Nic, now 36 and eight years sober, struggled for a moment as he sought the right words to describe the disembodied way it made him feel.

"I - well, the Nic character - no, I - stole the money," he said. "It's such a shameful thing. I knew it was in the script, but just watching it, it was like, oh, God."

That era was harrowing for the Sheffs. Nic was scrounging the darkest corners of California's Bay Area in search of his next fix while David was glued to his phone, waiting for the call from his son to come rescue him or from the emergency room to tell him that Nic hadn't made it.

Video

A preview of the film.

Whatever star-struck feelings the Sheffs may have about the project or the people playing them, they cannot help but brace for the inevitable pain of opening up old wounds - the discomfort of seeing themselves at their most desperate, on display for a mass audience.

But beneath these conflicting emotions is one they did not expect: gratitude, for the chance to reflect on an agonizing past and appreciate how lucky they were to survive it.

"Of course it brings us right back to those years, and those years were horrific," David Sheff added. "At the same time, it's really good to remember."

"Beautiful Boy" is a movie that has added resonance for me, too. I also grew up in a family with a drug addict: My father abused cocaine for roughly the first 20 years of my life, and I've written previously about how this fractured our relationship and how we eventually repaired it. (In the interest of full disclosure, David Sheff blurbed a memoir I published in 2011.)

Though the story told in "Beautiful Boy" is the inverse of mine, the film taps into some greater truths about addiction: what it is like to live with a user, or to recover and relapse back into addiction, and what it is like to carry the shame of someone else's degrading behavior, even as you care for that person. It doesn't pretend to prescribe easy solutions to such complicated problems.

Most of all, the movie offers a stark illustration of why those of us who have lived through stories like these feel compelled to tell them, again and again.

When I sat down with the Sheffs last month, I saw little outward evidence of the traumas they'd endured. David, now 62, has a lined and stately face that disguises his own bohemian coming of age in Northern California, while Nic has retained a boyish, sad-eyed handsomeness.

Video

Back

transcript

'Beautiful Boy' | Anatomy of a Scene

Felix Van Groeningen narrates a sequence from his film featuring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell.

My name is Felix Van Groeningen and I am the director of Beautiful Boy. In this scene we see Steve Carell playing the father, David, and Timothée Chalamet playing the son, Nic, meet up. They haven't seen each other in a while. Nick is living on the streets doing drugs, and agreed to meet with his father to sit down and talk. The father wants to reason with him to try and get him to come home. "This is so weird, this place." "So how you doing?" "I'm doing great, you know, just doing what needs to be done." "What does that mean?" "Just being responsible for myself, and I've quit on my own. You know, so I've got five days now. I feel like I'm doing well but I just need a few hundred bucks, though." "Nic, I can't give you any money." What I find so fascinating in this scene is how many twists and turns there are. They both come in with an agenda. David has a preconceived idea of how he wants to deal with this situation, which is not to criticize his son, yet the fact that he can't reach him, that he feels that his son is playing him makes him do things he doesn't want to and then it becomes this incredible tennis match where we see these two actors really on the top of their game. We rehearsed this scene many times in the lead up to the shoot of this. It's a massive scene, and we played it out every time in one go, and we shot it with two cameras in order to be able to capture the energy between them. Often we had Steve's character David like, be a little bit lower or behind something or be in a frame that's a little bit too wide, so he felt a little bit lost or a bit off, and here too that's why we have this low angle and like you see the corner of the table, like, cornering him a bit. "Oh. it doesn't look like it's working out, so what then, therapy, huh?" "You can come home." "No." "We would make it work. Please." Timothée is, I think, an incredibly talented actor. What makes him so great for this movie is his fearlessness. He will take on anything and he will just go 200% and 300% and when he hits it right, he just blows you away. "You think that you have this under control, and I understand how scared you are." "I understand why I do things. It doesn't make me any different, all right? I'm attracted to craziness, and you're just embarrassed because I was like, you know, I was like this amazing thing, like your special creation or something, and you don't like who I am now." "Yeah, who are you, Nic?" "This is me, dad, here. This is who I am." You see them trying to connect but they both realize that it's not working anymore, so it's very sad because of that. "You don't like what you see?"

Felix Van Groeningen narrates a sequence from his film featuring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell. Credit Credit... Francois Duhamel/Amazon Studios

Timothée Chalamet, left, and Steve Carell as the Sheffs in "Beautiful Boy." Credit... Francois Duhamel/Amazon Studios

They are comfortable together, and though there's little that's unknown about either of them anymore, they were the first to learn each other's worst secrets and still know exactly how to push one another's buttons.

As open as they are about themselves, and as often as they have told their stories, they still approached the film adaptation process with some wariness, knowing that it meant revisiting their bad choices and outdated perspectives.

David recalled his difficult struggle to see his addicted son with sympathy, to make the mental shift from "how could he do this to me and the family and to himself, to understanding that he was troubled and ill."

"Once I did," he said, "I could look at him with compassion and sadness instead of judgment and horror."

Nic spoke of the enduring prejudices faced by addicts, who are often seen as selfish hedonists. "We have this image of kids who are getting high, having fun, and they don't care who it hurts," he said. Looking at himself from a distance, Nic added: "Clearly this kid is not having fun. He's having trouble."

The Sheffs said they were reassured by the film's director, Felix Van Groeningen, the Belgian filmmaker ( "The Broken Circle Breakdown") for whom "Beautiful Boy" is his first English-language feature.

Mr. Van Groeningen, who with his fellow screenwriter Luke Davies ("Lion") merged the Sheffs' memoirs into a single narrative, told me he was particularly drawn to "David's mythical journey as a father, trying to understand and save his son."

"At some point it almost read like a thriller," he added. "There's this very visceral feeling of never being worry-free."

During the film's development, Mr. Van Groeningen embedded himself with the Sheffs, surfing with Nic and taking long, philosophical walks with David, looking through his family photos and sleeping over at his house.

The director said he emerged with the desire to preserve a certain emotional truth about them. "There's a sense of unconditional love in their family that is amazing and beautiful," Mr. Van Groeningen said. "It is maybe one of the reasons why Nic found his way out."

Mr. Chalamet, the Oscar-nominated star of "Call Me by Your Name," told me that he also felt a personal obligation to spend time with Nic before playing him in "Beautiful Boy."

Given "the nature of the story and how intimate it is, I try to be sensitive to that," he said. "It would be really cavalier as an actor if I didn't."

But he added that his and Mr. Carell's performances were ultimately depictions of the Sheffs and not a perfect recreation of them. "By the laws of reality, we're not them and couldn't possibly be," he said.

"What they went through is the actual story," he said. What interested him and his collaborators was "making a movie as universal is possible."

The Sheffs in 1988, before addiction entered their lives. Credit...

I can say from my own experiences that "Beautiful Boy" achieves this, in the anxious mood it conjures of a father who becomes preoccupied and then obsessed with his efforts to safeguard his son from his drug habit. As David Sheff writes in his memoir, "I became addicted to my child's addiction."

The film captures the precariousness of an addict's sobriety, how easily it is violated, and how humiliating and frustrating the repeated experience is for the sufferer and his loved ones.

"There's the feeling that everyone is watching you, suspicious of you," Nic Sheff said. "It's something that is difficult for addicts when they're getting sober, that feeling of, how do I build back trust?"

"Beautiful Boy" is also a movie that is undaunted about arriving at an ambiguous ending (which I won't spoil here); it doesn't promise the potential redemption of its characters, nor does it strike the relentlessly bleak tone of, say, "Requiem for a Dream."

"It ends in such a way that you really don't know what's going to happen next," David Sheff said. "There's no doubt about the love and commitment within this family. But that's reality of what it means to be addicted."

The Sheffs' memoirs were published long enough ago that the books describe, in earnest, details that their readers were likely to be unfamiliar with at the time, whether the effects of methamphetamine or the pernicious ways it alters users' brain chemistry.

Since then, use of the drug in the United States has skyrocketed, and it was involved in more than 10,000 overdose deaths in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A record 72,000 Americans were killed by drug overdoses last year, a figure driven in part by synthetic opioids. President Trump has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.

All of which, the Sheffs say, makes the story of "Beautiful Boy" relevant if not urgent, regardless of which drug figures most prominently in it.

"My brain chemistry really liked crystal meth more than anything else," Nic said. "But I was doing heroin, I was taking whatever pills I could get. Addicts will take whatever is there in front of them."

David added, "The impacts on the families are no different."

It's a bittersweet result of the success of their books and the increased visibility that the movie has already brought them that the Sheffs often find themselves hearing the stories of other families affected by drug addiction. The accounts are delivered in face-to-face conversations, in emails or social media posts, and they are frequently bleak.

As David Sheff explained: "Over and over, it's: 'You told our story, but our story had a different ending. Our child died.'"

He continued, "The idea that I can look up and see Nic sitting next to me as we're watching this movie --" His voice trailed off.

But other stories give them hope. Scrolling through Twitter on his phone, David landed at a message that he said was "our dream for what the movie would do": a note from someone who said that "Beautiful Boy" had inspired the writer to reconsider the plight of a cousin with a drug addiction and apologize to him.

Even as they are made to reckon yet again with their own personal tragedy, the Sheffs are finding new wrinkles and nuances in it, and discovering new value in the act of revisiting it.

"It feels like we've hammered out every last thing we could have possibly had a hidden resentment about," Nic Sheff said. "We've had to deal with every last piece of the complicated puzzle of our history. It feels like there's nothing we can't talk about, nothing we have to shy away from or ignore. That feels like a huge gift, too."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fathers and Sons, Reliving on Film the Pain of Addiction (Published 2018)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nic Sheff was sitting next to his father, David, as he recounted one of the lowest moments in his life. It was the time when Nic, college-aged and living in his father's home, observed his little brother, Jasper, and their younger sister, Daisy, fighting over a few missing dollars that Jasper accused Daisy of stealing from him.

# data[].attributes.headline
Girl with skin condition signs modeling contract

# data[].attributes.subject
Girl with skin condition signs modeling contract

# data[].attributes.body
A Seattle area young girl helps redefine beauty by signing a modeling contract, despite the fact that she has a rare skin condition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Date: 02/17/2020
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/edmonds-girl-4-has-beauty-thats-more-than-skin-deep/
Harper Foy was born with harlequin ichthyosis, a skin condition that's 1 in 500,000. She's a fighter.

By Julie Muhlstein

EDMONDS - Harper Foy arrived a month early. Her mom was out gardening when labor began. What Angie and Kevin Foy didn't know - could never have suspected - was that their baby girl would come into this world with an incredibly rare condition and daunting challenges for life.

"The more we share our story, the less people will be scared," Angie Foy said Wednesday as Harper, an energetic 4-year-old, jumped around and dribbled a basketball through the family's kitchen.

Harper doesn't look like most other people. Today, her skin appears somewhat like a burn victim's might.

At birth her parents were stunned by her condition. She suffers from harlequin ichthyosis, a severe genetic disorder affecting the skin. It's so rare, the Foys said, that doctors at EvergreenHealth, the Kirkland hospital where she was born Sept. 20, 2015, had never seen it.

Infants with harlequin ichthyosis are born with very hard, thick skin covering most of their bodies. It forms large plates separated by deep cracks. The condition alters the shape of the eyelids, nose, mouth and ears. And that hard skin severely restricts movement, breathing especially.

"It builds up over pregnancy. With time it becomes armor-like," said Dr. Deepti Gupta, a dermatologist at Seattle Children's Hospital and an assistant professor in the University of Washington School of Medicine's pediatrics department.

After birth, she said, the plaques break up and slowly lift off.

"There is no cure for Harper's condition," Gupta said Thursday. Since those anguishing early days, she has treated the little girl and gotten to know her unbeatable spirit. She has seen the Foys' devotion to Harper's care.

"She's spunky," said Angie Foy, 43, who shares with her husband a nearly round-the-clock routine. They bathe Harper around four times each day, for about an hour, and cover her little body with Aquaphor. The ointment keeps her skin from turning scaly.

"She's definitely got an awesome personality," said Kevin Foy, 41. "She's got a great spirit. If she didn't, I don't know if she'd be here."

In the past, "it used to be very rare for affected infants to survive the newborn period," according to the U.S. Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. Risks include respiratory failure, dehydration and life-threatening infection.

"It's actually very, very rare," one in about 500,000 births, said Gupta, who saw such a case during her medical training in San Francisco. With improved care in today's neonatal intensive care units, and the use of retinoid medication, "more are living longer and longer," Gupta said. "We're seeing the earliest of those patients in their 20s and 30s."

Harlequin ichthyosis is caused by mutations in a gene, ABCA12, that normally provides instructions for making a protein needed for normal skin development. Both parents of an affected child have the mutated gene, but typically not the condition.

The Foys both carry the mutated gene. But with a son, 9, and daughter, 20, not affected by harlequin ichthyosis, they had no idea. Angie Foy had an ultrasound exam during pregnancy. The sonogram pictured nothing of concern, they said.

Gupta said skin isn't fully formed until the third trimester of a pregnancy.

"Never in a million years," Angie Foy said, could they have foreseen their youngest child's condition.

Harper Foy, born Sept. 20, 2015, is comforted by her mother, Angie Foy, shortly after her birth. Harper was born with harlequin ichthyosis, a rare genetic condition in which newborns have hard plates of thickened skin covering their bodies.
Vital care at home
Every four hours or so, Harper's parents give her a bath or shower. They have a special tub, with micro-bubble technology that's helpful for people with skin conditions.

Soaks and ointment keep Harper's skin from thickening, turning hard and cracking.

"Her body is always making new skin," Angie Foy said. "We have to do it or it would build up again."

"It's a 24-hour job," said Kevin Foy, who also coaches son Jaxson's fourth-grade basketball, soccer and football teams. Jaxson attends Holy Rosary School in Edmonds, where the Foys said the community has shown great support.

To care for Harper, both parents work from home. Her reddish skin is now paperthin and prone to bleeding even from the little bumps of normal childhood activities. Angie Foy sells real estate. Her husband works in the telecom industry, and is involved in cell tower leases and construction.

On Wednesday, as Harper dashed into her room, she ran into something that resulted in a small cut. There were a few tears as the 4-year-old endured placement of a Band-Aid on the side of her head.

"If she falls, she bleeds," her mom said as Harper retreated under a blanket next to her dad on the couch.

As a baby, during a couple months at Seattle Children's, Harper had surgery to release pressure caused by the plaques. The condition includes the risk of losing extremities due to a lack of blood circulation. Early on, Harper lost the ends of some of her fingers.

"She's a fighter," Kevin Foy said.

Harper accompanies her dad when he coaches her brother's teams, and even has her own whistle.

The prospect of school, though, presents hurdles. Right now, Harper can't go down stairs because the skin on her legs cracks. During a school day, her dad said, she'd need to come home after four hours to shower.

"We need to get her stronger and bigger," Angie Foy said.

There are other concerns. People with harlequin ichthyosis are sensitive to sun. They'll always have red itchy skin. And because sweating is impaired, overheating is an issue. Harper also needs more fluids and calories than normal.

"They do have higher calorie requirements," Gupta said. "The skin is doing a lot more work."

The doctor sees the possibility of independent lives for Harper and others with her condition. There's no effect on cognitive abilities, said Gupta, who described Harper as a bright child who understands her care routine.

Someday, "I think she should be able to live independently," Gupta said. "They've been doing a lot of skin care from day one. As she gets older, I bet she'll take some of it over herself. It's a constant in her life."

Harper Foy, a 4-year-old who suffers from a rare genetic skin condition, has a laugh with her dad, Kevin Foy, in their Edmonds home. "She has a great spirit," he says. "If she didn't, I don't know if she'd be here." (Dan Bates / The Herald)
Harper in the spotlight
Harper said Wednesday that her favorite toys are a monster truck and a basketball. She's also part of something unexpected. Late last year, she did a photo shoot with a modeling agency.

That chapter in her life was featured in a Dec. 19 blog, "Harper models to inspire the world: You're Beautiful in Your Own Skin," on the Seattle Children's Hospital website.

Angie Foy said people often stare at Harper, or avoid getting close because they fear her condition is contagious.

"We want her to know she is beautiful, both inside and out," Harper's mom said in the blog, written by Kathryn Mueller.

The Foys have signed a contract for Harper with TCM Models & Talent, a Seattle-based agency, and hope others will get a chance to see the little girl they adore.

"The modeling industry is moving toward more inclusion," said Brittni Thoreson, who books kids through the children's division of the agency. "We represent Harper now," Thoreson said. She is seeing more opportunities for those with special needs, people of color, larger-size models and whole families.

"We're broadening our horizons. The whole industry is moving toward reflecting real humans," Thoreson said. "And Harper has quite the little personality."

Harper was involved in an initial shoot with photographer Elke Van de Velde. Some pictures show her wearing Seahawks gear. In others, she's with doctors and nurses from Seattle Children's.

"It's a fun opportunity for kids to kind of come out of their shells," Thoreson said.

"She's an amazing girl. Part of her energy is just Harper," Gupta said. "The message of beauty kind of lies in all of us. It's more than skin deep."
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com. Learn more
More about Harper Foy, an Edmonds girl born with harlequin ichthyosis, at: pulse.seattlechildrens.org/harper-models-to-inspire-the-world-youre-beautiful-in-your-own-skin

Learn about the genetic skin disorder harlequin ichthyosis at: rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/6568/harlequin-ichthyosis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edmonds girl, 4, has beauty that's 'more than skin deep'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Date: 02/17/2020 https://www.heraldnet.com/news/edmonds-girl-4-has-beauty-thats-more-than-skin-deep/ Harper Foy was born with harlequin ichthyosis, a skin condition that's 1 in 500,000. She's a fighter. By Julie Muhlstein EDMONDS - Harper Foy arrived a month early. Her mom was out gardening when labor began.

# data[].attributes.body
Low income kids have the opportunity to learn the sport of squash

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Squash program helping young people realize their potential

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Squash was not on Reyna Pacheco's radar until a program came to her school in San Diego. She became a star in the sport and learned to dream big - helping her work hard and succeed outside of athletics. There are more than 2,000 kids enrolled in Squash and Education Alliance programs across the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
A man who spent his own childhood in foster care has adopted 3 kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Like many 20-year-olds, Barry Farmer felt adrift, unsure of what to do. He spotted an ad looking for foster parents and applied. Growing up in foster care, he knew how meaningful the role was to kids. But he had no idea he'd become a single dad to three sons before turning 30.

"After talking to the director of programs she was like, 'Wow, impressive maturity. I'm willing to take a chance and license you as a foster parent,'" Farmer, 34, host of "The Barry Farmer Morning Show with Sharon Lizzy" in Richmond, Virginia, told TODAY Parents. "The director was like, 'I can get you a license. But to be honest a young, single male, social workers are not going to be kicking down the door asking for you.'"

A year after Farmer received his foster parent license, he met his first placement - a 16-year-old who was in a group home. The teen stayed with Farmer for about six months. Two months later, Farmer received another call that changed his life.

"They asked if I want to try another teenager or do I want to go with a 7-year-old," Farmer explained. "(I thought) 'Why don't we go with the 7-year-old and see how it is going to go?' It seemed like I could be a little more active and take him places."

The child needed to be placed immediately and Farmer knew little about him.

"This child, in my head, is Black," Farmer said. "When I got there, he was just the whitest white child that I ever worked with ... I thought, 'Wow this is going to be interesting.' Because I have no clue what I am doing."

Farmer soon learned, though, that the boy, Jaxon, wanted what most children want.

"He was so loving and caring," he said. "He just wanted some hugs and to call me dad."

They soon settled into a groove. Then Jaxon left to be adopted by another family and Farmer noticed how much he missed him.

"I didn't realize how close he was to me until he left," he said. "I was sad and he was sad. He did end up coming back and that's when we both decided that I would adopt him."

At the time, Farmer was 22. But becoming Jaxon's dad felt right.

"You're responsible for somebody else's life on purpose," he said. "Going from true strangers, we built a bond in six months where we felt comfortable enough to be father and son."

Almost immediately after, Jaxon wanted to expand the family.

"We were on our way back from the courthouse and I heard a little voice in the backseat saying, 'So am I going to have a brother?' and I'm like 'I just became your dad like 30 minutes ago can we just calm down?'" Farmer said. "Once I was taking care of him, he did need a sibling."

On an adoption website, Farmer found a boy, Xavier, who lived out of state and needed a family. Farmer drove for hours to show Xavier to see he was trustworthy and reliable.

"Kids need to know that you are committed to them," he said. "I wanted to be that person for him."

Farmer admits his own childhood led him to fostering and adopting. He was in kinship foster care and raised by his grandmother.

"What motivates me are those feelings of rejection of not having my parents around," he said. "My grandmother, she didn't have to take me in. I didn't even know her."

That made Farmer realize how important it was that he be that person for someone else.

"Why she did it, it was to help. She didn't have to, she wanted to. Those are my reasons as well. I didn't have to, I wanted to," he said. "It just really gave me a sense of purpose and I enjoyed it."

Soon after adopting Xavier, the program director at a foster agency reached out to Farmer about fostering a 4-year-old boy. At the time, Farmer felt unsure. He had just adopted a second son. He said no at first but believed that if it were meant to be, he'd receive a sign. A few months later, the director again called about the boy, Jeremiah, who needed a respite placement.

"I thought this must be it," Farmer said. "He must belong here."

Soon after, Jeremiah became a part of the family. Jaxon is now 19; Xavier is 17 and Jeremiah is 11. The family enjoys their mini road trips on the East coast, visiting amusement parks, exploring new cities and going to the beach.

"We have a bunch of laughs," Farmer said. "That really brought us all together. Every time we did it, they got to meet some of my extended family along the way."

He urges people to consider fostering or adoption.

"Single parenting is not wrong. It is very doable with a village," he said. "I would encourage people to not only becoming licensed foster parents but to become adoptive parents."

While adopting his sons gives him purpose, Farmer has also learned more about himself.

"I have a lot more patience than I thought," he said, laughing. "It's also given me an opportunity to be the father I wish that I had."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Single man who grew up in foster care adopts 3 boys

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Like many 20-year-olds, Barry Farmer felt adrift, unsure of what to do. He spotted an ad looking for foster parents and applied. Growing up in foster care, he knew how meaningful the role was to kids. But he had no idea he'd become a single dad to three sons before turning 30.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mental health foundation honors teen lost to suicide

# data[].attributes.subject
Mental health foundation honors teen lost to suicide

# data[].attributes.body
Parents of a Pennsylvania teen offers help to kids struggling with mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hope comes from tragedy as Delco parents form foundation to help teens in honor of daughter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every parent of a teenager needs to know the important information in this story. Exactly a year and a half ago, a Delaware County teen lost her life to suicide. And, while her parents still search for answers, they share their story in the hope of preventing another loss.

# data[].attributes.body
Kids who are burn victims can share positive experiences at camp

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Melissa Kersten remembers when, early in her time as a counselor at what is known as Burn Camp in Wisconsin, she overheard a group of girls chatting. One of them said: "I would never change what happened to me for anything" and the others agreed.

Kersten says she found that curious, considering that what happened to all of them was a burn injury serious enough to require treatment and maybe even a long hospitalization and rehab.

"It was very impactful for me because how do you understand that, not having gone through it?" muses Kersten. "It was kind of crazy to think about all the pain and all the difficulties and sometimes having to relearn how to walk and eat and things like that, and to hear someone say that, I was like 'I need to know more about this.'"

Kersten credits the girls' positive take on their ordeals to the aftercare they have gotten, including from attending Burn Camp.

She has made her professional life all about burn injury recovery. Her full-time job is as a nurse practitioner at Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Regional Burn Center and Outpatient Clinic in Milwaukee. Burn Camp is her avocation. She has volunteered there since 2004, first as a camp counselor and for the last five years as director.

The annual event, officially Summer Camp for Burn Injured Youth, requires year-round planning and much more of her time than just the week of vacation she devotes to it every August. Still, she says: "This is what I do for fun."

Camp Timber-lee
This year the camp was held Aug. 8-14. The location is Camp Timber-lee in East Troy, Wisconsin, about 40 miles west of Milwaukee. Shared use of the 300-acre private space is rented for the event by the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin Charitable Foundation.

Mike Wos, the foundation's executive director, says the group plans and funds events for burn victims of all ages. "Burn Camp is certainly our flagship program that we're most known for," Wos says.

This was the event's 27th year. The foundation began its burn victim programs after three fires in Milwaukee within two weeks in fall 1987 killed 20 people, including 17 children.

"Like most nonprofits, it starts with tragedy but through that tragedy we've served thousands of young burn victims through Burn Camp and other burn injury support programs that we do throughout the year," Wos says.

All of the foundation's programs are free to participants. Wos said the budget for Burn Camp is about $114,000. That includes hiring motor coaches to pick up campers in three Wisconsin cities: Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay; a week of swimming, fishing, archery, horseback riding and other activities; and lodging for the campers and volunteer staff of 38.

Pandemic adjustments
The week at camp is open to any child aged 7-17 who got care for a burn injury at a medical facility in Wisconsin. Campers tend to come back year after year, and some go on to become counselors. In a typical year, 50-60 children and teenagers attend. This year, like last year, wasn't typical because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, the camp was all virtual. The organizers sent a "camp-in-box" package to all the campers. It included supplies for crafts such as tie-dyeing T-shirts and various other goodies. For seven days, Kersten and the other camp volunteers arranged virtual events that the campers could do by Zoom. In addition to crafts, there was a virtual kayak tour and marshmallow-eating competition.

One of the camp's big events is a fire truck parade that features dozens of engines from departments across the state. Aine King, program coordinator for the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin Charitable Foundation, says that last year, "Each kid's local fire department came out with rig and dropped off coupons for Culver's custard" at their homes. "It was really special, even in the midst of COVID."

This year the overnight camp and the fire truck parade resumed, with modifications. Wos said the camp followed pandemic protocols recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and groups like the YMCA to minimize the chances of COVID spread.

Instead of one weeklong event, the camp was broken into two sessions. From Sunday-Tuesday, campers ages 7-12 attended. The older campers came Thursday-Saturday. Wednesday was a cleaning day. There was a parade at each session, albeit with fewer engines in each.

A village of supporters
As in years past, fire departments from across Wisconsin donated the meals for the campers and volunteers. Wos is with the Oshkosh department, which brought in lunch on Monday. He estimates that the camp has had monetary or in-kind gifts from 3,000 donors over the years.

"It really takes a village to put this on," he says. "Through so many great people, it's made possible year after year."

Some of the funding for the camp comes from an annual golf tournament, an event founded by the National Fire Sprinkler Association. Some of the event's proceeds go to the Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Regional Burn Center and Outpatient Clinic by way of the Ascension Wisconsin Foundation.

Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Regional Burn Center treats burn victims as young as 13. The outpatient clinic treats patients of all ages. Darlene Sargent manages both. She says the clinic, which opened in 2014, meets a specific need of burn patients who, after being treated in an emergency room, sometimes had to wait days for follow-up care. The clinic has a goal to get all patients seen within 48 hours of their ER visits. Sargent says patients usually are seen within 24 hours.

The clinic is staffed by four nurses who provide medical care and education for wound care and scar management. The clinic provides follow-up care for adults discharged from the hospital's inpatient burn unit and youth discharged from pediatric burn centers in the Milwaukee area. Kersten also assists at the clinic, which she helped open.

Sargent says burn care requires a caregiver who can tend to people with physical and emotional wounds from the accident or abuse that led to their injuries. "They want to work with a very vulnerable patient population," she says of the burn center staff.

Sargent says many burn center or clinic staffers have volunteered their time as either counselors or craft or activity leaders at Burn Camp. She likes to attend on the camp's visitors' day, which in non-pandemic times typically draws a few hundred people.

"I just like to see the kids, see them grow, see the adults that work at the camp," she says. "It's nice to see all the support that the Burn Camp gets from various organizations."

Connecting with others
This year Burn Camp drew 42 overnight campers; five attended virtually. A side event called Explorers Camp for children ages 3-6 had three children who participated virtually. In normal years, explorers get an early taste of the camp by spending one day there with their families. They are even assigned a bunk in a cabin where they hang out for part of the day.

This was 12-year-old Jazmin Gutierrez' fourth year at camp. Jazmin got outpatient care after being scalded by a bowl of ramen noodles that tipped over as she pulled it out of a microwave that was nearly out of her reach.

Her mother, Crystal Kozinski, says Jazmin loves going to the camp. Horseback riding and fishing are among her favorite activities and she raves about the food.

Kozinski says being around the other kids her first year at camp made Jazmin less self-conscious about a burn scar on her chest. "When she went to camp and she saw some of the other kids who were way worse than her, she felt bad for feeling bad," Kozinski says.

Freedom to thrive
That sort of connection and self-awareness is what the camp is all about, say its organizers. While the experience mostly is vintage summer camp, sprinkled in are some self-esteem and self-awareness sessions as well as at least one motivational speech. Activities like a zip line and a rope course that let campers push themselves to their limits teach that their injuries don't define or limit them, the organizers say.

Kersten says: "I'm just most proud of being able to watch the campers grow up and maybe making a small impact in their lives and being able to encourage them to know that they're not alone in their journey and that we're always here to come alongside them."

Copyright © 2021 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
For reprint permission, contact Betty Crosby or call (314) 253-3490.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melissa Kersten remembers when, early in her time as a counselor at what is known as Burn Camp in Wisconsin, she overheard a group of girls chatting. One of them said: "I would never change what happened to me for anything" and the others agreed.

# data[].attributes.body
Coaches are using sports to save Memphis kids from the streets and help them get on a different path

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coaches using sports to save Memphis kids from the streets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Memphis youth football team is coached by former gang members. It’s not a script for a movie, although it could be.

# data[].attributes.body
Temple Grandin was diagnosed with autism and now is a leading spokesperson on the condition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

# data[].attributes.body
The case of a missing girl leads to a nation-wide alert system for missing children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Jan. 13, 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her pink bicycle beside her younger brother, Ricky, in a parking lot of an abandoned Winn-Dixie grocery store.

Ricky decided to pedal back to his grandparent's Arlington, Texas, home, but before Amber could join him, a man driving a black pick-up truck snatched her off her bicycle, put her inside the driver's side door and took off.

An elderly man, who witnessed the abduction from his backyard, told police he saw the 1980s or '90s truck parked earlier at a nearby laundromat before the assailant drove up, kidnapped Amber and drove towards the center of Arlington, away from nearby Highway 360.

Four days later, a man walking his dog found Amber's body near a creek, about four miles from the parking lot where she was taken.

Police believe the suspect - who was described as a white or Hispanic male, in his 20s or 30s, under 6 ft. with dark hair - was a local.

"Based on the direction of travel when they left [the Winn-Dixie] and then based on her being found in Arlington, being abducted in Arlington and just being in that spot, the question has always been, did somebody have a connection with that area where the abduction was?" Arlington Police Sgt. Grant Gildon tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.

"It's a very secluded area where her body was found. We do believe you'd have to be somewhat familiar with that area to know where that creek is," he says. "Was there a connection with that location? And was it someone who had a reason for turning back to the center of town? The thought has always been that the easiest way to get out of the area would've been to go to Highway 360."

Amber's murder sent anguish and anger throughout the community and beyond. Texas mom Diana Simone couldn't stop thinking about how a kidnapper snatched Amber and escaped without a trace.

"I said, 'I can't get over this child. There has to be something we can do,'" Simone tells PEOPLE. There were weather and civil defense alerts so, "why wouldn't they do it for this?"

Amber Hagerman's mother Donna Williams makes a plea for her daughters killer to turn themselves in during a press conference

Simone called a local radio station with her idea of an emergency system that would be set up so that when a 911 call was placed, radio stations would immediately interrupt programming to broadcast the alert.

Fourteen days after Amber's abduction, she wrote a letter to the station requesting that if her alert system was put into place, it would be known as Amber's plan. The plan, renamed the AMBER (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert, was put into place that same year.

Today, AMBER Alerts are used in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 33 countries. To date, they have saved at least 1,085 children in the U.S., according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

"Without the people, without people caring and willing to participate, I don't care how good of an idea it is, it would've gone nowhere," says Simone. "It's the goodness in the hearts of the people who care that are making the difference."

Donna Williams pauses Jan. 13, 2021, after placing flowers at a memorial for her daughter, Amber Hagerman

For more on Amber Hagerman and the AMBER Alert system, subscribe now to PEOPLE, or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands now.

Shockingly, despite the far-reaching impact of Amber's case and despite over 7,000 tips, her killer remains at large 26 years later.

"We continue to have leads," says Gildon. "And there are still several leads that we continue to investigate extensively as possible suspects. A lot of people will refer to Amber's case as, what's commonly referred to as, a cold case. But for the Arlington Police Department, it has never been listed as a cold case because we've never gone 180 days without having some lead come in."

Police are hopeful that recent advancements in DNA testing being used on evidence collected in Amber's case as well as any new tips from the public will finally solve it.

"I remain optimistic that this case will be solved," says Gildon, who believes the killer is still alive. "I do believe there's definitely someone out there who has the answers that we're looking for and can help lead us in the right direction. So, that's why we continue to work on it. Our goal has always remained the same, and that's to catch who did this and be able to prosecute them."
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
"Amber was just a very sweet, innocent child, and that's the memory we got to hold onto as we investigate," he says. "That this is someone who was doing something as innocent as riding a bicycle, and evil found her that day."

Anyone with information about Amber's case is asked to call the Arlington police at 817-575-8823 or Crime Stoppers of Tarrant County at 817-469-TIPS (8477).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Texas Girl's Abduction Inspired the Lifesaving 'Amber Alert,' but 26 Years Later Her Own Case Remains Unsolved

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Jan. 13, 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her pink bicycle beside her younger brother, Ricky, in a parking lot of an abandoned Winn-Dixie grocery store. Ricky decided to pedal back to his grandparent's Arlington, Texas, home, but before Amber could join him, a man driving a black pick-up truck snatched her off her bicycle, put her inside the driver's side door and took off.

# data[].attributes.headline
10-year-old brain cancer survivor coaches basketball

# data[].attributes.subject
10-year-old brain cancer survivor coaches basketball

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ryan Rasul and his father, Harold Rasul, are making a difference in their community in Ohio by starting a youth basketball program named "Little Hands," following the 10-year-old's battle with brain cancer.

Cleveland's WKYC reported that Ryan was diagnosed with ependymoma in 2014 after a tumor was found in his brain. Cedars-Sinai describes ependymoma as a cancerous tumor that "starts in the brain or spinal cord" and can occur in children and adults.

Those individuals diagnosed with ependymoma can experience various symptoms, depending on where the tumor is found. The list includes seizures, headaches, and mobility issues, to name a few. There are numerous ways to treat ependymoma, such as surgery and radiation therapy.

Following Ryan's diagnosis, the 5th grader underwent three brain surgeries. Since the operation, Ryan has flourished in his personal life. He also joined forces with his father, using their love for basketball to teach the youth at Citizens Academy Southeast.

On January 7, during an interview with NBC News, Ryan shared what he thought was the best part of being a leader. He said, "My favorite part about being a coach is inspiring other people to pursue their dreams."

When asked if his story inspired the creation of the program, Ryan explained, "It's definitely a driving force, and I have to be on my best behavior at all times so [that] I could be a good leader, and the kids could look up to me."

Further in the discussion, Harold expressed that "it means a lot" to have Ryan following in his footsteps with coaching. He added that this experience would help Ryan understand his purpose and value in life.

When asked how he feels seeing how excited the children are to be a part of the team, Ryan said, "It's heartwarming. Every time I feel discouraged, or if I feel angry, I just think about those kids that are looking up to me.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10-Year-Old Brain Cancer Survivor and His Dad Create 'Little Hands' Basketball Program for Children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ryan Rasul and his father, Harold Rasul, are making a difference in their community in Ohio by starting a youth basketball program named "Little Hands," following the 10-year-old's battle with brain cancer. Cleveland's WKYC reported that Ryan was diagnosed with ependymoma in 2014 after a tumor was found in his brain.

# data[].attributes.body
An organization specifically targets dogs who may be abused or neglected to give them a better life

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
FORGOTTEN DOGS RESCUE

Because no dog should be forgotten.

Forgotten Dogs Rescue is a volunteer and foster home based rescue organization focused on saving Pit Bull type dogs. Located in Washington State, we are a 501c3 non-profit and have been saving animals since 2011. We are dedicated to rescuing homeless and abandoned dogs who are in Washington's shelters, surrendered by their owners due to difficult circumstances or are in danger of abuse or neglect.

We save the dogs that need help the most, the dogs whose time has run out, the dogs who have lost all hope - the forgotten dogs.

"We just adopted our sweet puppy, Wrigley though FDR and couldn't be happier. Everyone there has been so helpful. "

Nicole M. on Facebook

Mailing

PO Box 80054

Seattle, WA 98108

​

Email

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Forgotten Dogs Rescue | A Washington State Dog Rescue

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Forgotten Dogs Rescue is a foster home based dog rescue focused on saving Pit Bull type dogs. Located in Washington State, we are a 501c3 non-profit and have been saving animals since 2011. We advocate for the homeless and abandoned dogs who need help the most, the forgotten dogs.

# data[].attributes.body
A cancer survivor may be the youngest Americanin space

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hayley Arceneaux, 29, became a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital nearly a year ago, almost two decades after beating pediatric cancer there herself. Now, she's set to reach new heights as the youngest American - and first with a prosthesis - to travel to space.

St. Jude announced on Monday that Arceneaux will be one of four crew members on the world's first all-civilian mission to space, which is called Inspiration4 and is tentatively set to take off at the end of 2021. The Memphis, Tenn. native, who was treated for bone cancer at the hospital as a child, called the opportunity an "incredible honor."

"When I was just 10 years old, St. Jude gave me the opportunity to grow up," she said. "Now I am fulfilling my dreams of working at the research hospital and traveling around the world. It's incredible to be a part of this mission that is not only raising crucial funds for the lifesaving work of St. Jude but also introducing new supporters to the mission and showing cancer survivors that anything is possible."

Earlier this month, trip commander Jared Isaacman - a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur, billionaire and pilot - announced that he had bought the flight from SpaceX and would donate the three other seats to members of the general public, with the goal of raising $200 million for St. Jude.

Arceneaux will occupy the mission seat representing the pillar of hope. The remaining two, representing "generosity" and "prosperity," are available through Feb. 28 and will go to one individual who donates to St. Jude and an entrepreneur who uses Isaacman's payment processing company Shift4Payments.

Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space, according to The Associated Press, edging out pioneering astronaut Sally Ride, who was 32 when she became the first American woman to launch in 1983.

She will also be the first American with a prosthesis in space, having had surgery at age 10 to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh bone, the AP reported. She has been cleared for flight by SpaceX and will serve as the crew's medical officer.

"My battle with cancer really prepared me for space travel," Arceneaux told the AP. "It made me tough, and then also I think it really taught me to expect the unexpected and go along for the ride."

In an interview with NBC's TODAY, Arceneaux said she never thought she would be able to go to space, noting that "until this mission you really had to be physically perfect." But when the call came "out of the blue" from St. Jude, asking if she wanted to go to space, the avid traveler, roller coaster-lover and lifelong space fan said yes immediately.

"I never thought I'd able to go to space... this mission is changing things."
Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old cancer survivor who has been selected as a civilian member of the @SpaceX Inspiration4 crew, joins us for her first official interview as a civilian astronaut. pic.twitter.com/kJucPacAma
- TODAY (@TODAYshow) February 22, 2021

She made sure to run it past her mother, as well as her brother and sister-in-law, who are both aerospace engineers and reassured her about the safety of space travel, the AP reported.

Officials involved in the two missions - launching civilians to space and fighting pediatric cancer - applauded Arceneaux's selection on Monday.

In a tweet, Isaacman called Arceneaux an inspiration not just to aspiring astronauts, but for "all people who need hope when encountering life challenges."

Meet commercial astronaut Hayley Arceneaux. She is an amazing person & I know she will be an inspiration to people all over the 🌍. Not just those w/ dreams of going to 🚀, but to all people who need hope when encountering life challenges . Hayley, welcome to @inspiration4x pic.twitter.com/t02LFuU7mm
- Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) February 22, 2021

And Richard Shadyac Jr., president and CEO of St. Jude's fundraising and awareness organization American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, praised her work in the pediatric cancer community.

"It has been a personal honor to watch Hayley grow up and fulfill her dreams. As a patient, an intern at ALSAC, and then in the Pediatric Oncology Education program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, she was always a rising star," Shadyac said. "She will be an incredible ambassador through this mission and inspiration to children fighting cancer and survivors worldwide."

According to St. Jude, Arceneaux - who described her job as her "ultimate life dream come true" when she accepted it just under a year ago - plans to devote much of her time on the mission to interacting with hospital patients through video chats or video messages.

Arceneaux said she can't wait to talk to her patients about going to space as a cancer survivor, as her experience will show them that they "don't have to limit themselves."

"I really hope to show them that the sky's not even the limit, that they can do anything," she said.

The mission crew will undergo comprehensive training, stress testing and mission simulations provided by SpaceX, the company said. They are set to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and orbit Earth every 90 minutes along a customized flight path during their multi-day journey before re-entering Earth's atmosphere for a soft water landing off the Florida coast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'The Sky's Not Even The Limit': Cancer Survivor To Become Youngest American In Space

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hayley Arceneaux, 29, became a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital nearly a year ago, almost two decades after beating pediatric cancer there herself. Now, she's set to reach new heights as the youngest American - and first with a prosthesis - to travel to space. St.

# data[].attributes.body
Founded by the daughter of an alzheimer's patient, this program allows people with memory loss to create art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A new art exhibit shines a light on Seattle's progress in becoming one of the nation's leading dementia-friendly cities.
"You feel like you are being asked to understand their world," said an onlooker standing in front of a painted landscape in The Artist Within: A Different View of Dementia at Seattle City Hall*. The exhibit, presented by the non-profit The Art of Alzheimer's, with support by the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center (MBWC), shows off artworks created by people living with Alzheimer disease and related conditions that lead to dementia. The organizations' founder, Marilyn Raichle, drew the inspiration from her mother Jean McFee Raichle's experience. She hopes the exhibit prompts viewers to remember that people living with dementia have creative strengths and stories to share.

The paintings on display come from individuals in the community and those who attend art-based programs in Seattle, such as the Adult Day Center Elderwise and the studio art classes offered by the Frye Art Museum's here:now program. As exhibit visitors noticed, these classes often use watercolor painting. That's because paint applied to wet paper spreads into visually striking shapes, bringing form from color rather than forcing someone with memory loss to make something happen on a blank page.

"The art gives me the extremes to feel higher up," says Franklin Stone, a former pediatrician and current Elderwise participant, who contributed a painting of what he says might be a plate of fruit. "So high. I mean, I nearly hit the ceiling."

Eye of the Beholder

Visitors walking through the exhibit had a variety of reactions. "What's marvelous is that the artists haven't overworked them, and chose just the right colors at the same time. There is spontaneity, and less inhibition," said Seattle resident Mary Lou Brown, who came to see her husband Don Brown's painting " Wind off the Prairie." Others paused to reflect on the inner lives of the artists. "They make you wonder how much of the process is about doing what you used to be able to do-and how much is an effort to express your new experience and show what you can do," said Seattle resident David Battisti. Indeed, some of the participants had been professional artists; others had never picked up a paintbrush before the diagnosis.

For Seattleites interested in learning more about the brain's enormous capacity for creativity in the face of cognitive decline, the Art of Alzheimer's hosted a walking tour and discussion on January 13th led by Dr. Tom Grabowski, Director of the UW MBWC, Dr. Marcus Raichle, a visiting neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis and UW alum, and artist Anna Hostvedt.

"I think it's important to recognize how much remains intact, such as sensitivity to textures, colors, and emotion, as attested by today's art," said Grabowski on the tour. "What's happening, I think, is that the self-critic can be quieted and the artistic impulse, a human quality, can emerge and come to the fore. From a neurologist's perspective, that's remarkable."

Embracing Creativity

Seattle City Hall provided the exhibit space in the lobby and the Anne Focke Art Gallery on Level 2. Randy Engstrom, Director of the City of Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture, remarks, "The Art of Alzheimer's is what this City Hall gathering space is imagined to be at its best: a way of using art and culture to hold conversations about issues that matter." The issue at hand is Seattle's growth into one of the leading dementia-friendly cities in the nation, meaning an inclusive, supportive, and hopeful place for people living with memory loss. As this exhibit testifies, Seattle offers a wealth of dementia-friendly arts engagement programs, as well as opportunities for recreation, social connection and volunteerism. A complete list of these programs and events, from theatre improv workshops, to zoo walks, gardening groups, museum gallery tours and more, can be found at momentiaseattle.org.

Alongside twenty-four community partners, Marigrace Becker of the UW MBWC helped Raichle pull off this exhibit as a member of the steering committee. As the Program Manager of Community Education and Impact of MBWC, Becker often observes the creative strengths of those living with memory loss, especially the ability to embrace the present, form new social connections, and create a legacy. "The dementia story does not need to be solely defined by fear, by shame, or loss," says Becker, "but can also be a story of potential, connection, joy, and creativity," mirroring how the exhibit challenges viewers to find more hope and less despair in the concept of dementia.

While the entire community benefits, the artists feel like they're the real winners of the exhibit. "I'm famous now," says Lenny Larsen of the Mt. Rainier illustration, "Memories of a Boy." "Well actually," says Suzanne Gardon, who focuses on plants and flowers, "we have achieved local fame."

- Genevieve Wanucha

*Starting Janurary 9, 2017, The Art of Alzheimer's exhibit will be on display at the UW School of Social Work. Learn more.

Missed the Opening Reception on March 10th? You can find the short videos of the speakers on our YouTube Page. From different perspectives, they communicate the value of recognizing the 'artist within' people living with memory loss and dementia. The UW's Whole U also featured highlights of the Opening Reception talks, with photos.

For more information, please contact gwanucha@uw.edu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new art exhibit shines a light on Seattle's progress in becoming one of the nation's leading dementia-friendly cities. "You feel like you are being asked to understand their world," said an onlooker standing in front of a painted landscape in The Artist Within: A Different View of Dementia at Seattle City Hall*.

# data[].attributes.headline
Teen helps others access mental health care

# data[].attributes.subject
Teen helps others access mental health care

# data[].attributes.body
A teen who has struggled with mental health helps others to access care and resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A rainbow windsock foretold the hope inside the North Naples church youth room. Anna Barry, 16, stepped to the front of crowd on a Friday evening last December.

"Hello, everyone who's here so far. Judges, are you ready?"

It was a trivia night, the first fundraiser for Anna's new group, Student Alliance on Mental Illness. It will provide financial help if parents can't or won't pay for a teen's counseling and establish a teen support group.

Already Anna had attracted about 15 members to a companion after-school club at Gulf Coast High School, where she is junior.

The idea for a club came to her last summer. The motivation was to create a //way for teenagers to get counseling without having to go through their parents.

The project was personal. During her sophomore year, Anna arrived in a dark place after years of battling anxieties about her weight and school and depressive thoughts. A high achiever in multiple advanced placement classes, Anna lost motivation and had trouble focusing on her work.

She didn't think about going to a school counselor.

"The counselors at the school don't give off that vibe like we're here to help you if you have personal struggles. They just sort of help with academic situations," Anna said, noting their high caseloads.

Finally, she reached out to her mother, which she hadn't wanted to do.

"It's a very, very vulnerable topic that I didn't want to discuss with anyone."

It took several months of medication and counseling for Anna to begin to heal.

"It's not like you go on medication and everything is OK."

Once Anna did get better, she thought about friends without her economic privileges or understanding parents.

"The only reason I was able to get the help I needed was that I'm middle-class, I have resources, and I have family that was supportive," she said. "I'd say actually a great percentage of the people, my friends I'm around have mental illness, but they're not able to get help for it."

Anna contacted Pamela Baker, CEO of NAMI Collier County, a local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Anna learned about a Florida law that allows teens, 13 and older, to receive outpatient mental health treatment, including counseling, without parental consent.

Baker said NAMI Collier has long had a fund to address financial barriers to mental health care for adults.

"We also provide a variety of peer supports to adults with mental illnesses, but there was really nothing like it in our area for teens."

Parental involvement is optimal, Baker said, but not always possible, and she had heard troubling reports of an increase in suicide attempts among teenagers.

Baker was impressed by Anna's passion for advocacy. They agreed to partner.

"I didn't know people listened to kids," Anna said.

SAMI is a program under NAMI Collier's umbrella. NAMI provides SAMI financial backing to help teenagers pay for counseling and to cover bus passes to appointments, among other services.

The first fundraiser attracted roughly two dozen teens and adults middle age and older, a rare but convivial social pairing. Barry's mom stood behind a table of Cheetos and popcorn for sale as her daughter announced the trivia winners.

"This age is such a tender age; a lot is going on," said Tracey Barry, 58. "In Anna's case, she's an overachiever. She wants to do so much."

Anna hopes to expand the group in Collier, and nationally. They had found a few therapists willing to counsel teenagers without parental consent and four students interested in services. The money raised that night would help pay for it.

Barry admired her daughter as Anna announced the night's grand total: $201.25.

"This generation is changing the world. People are going to be healthier."

Sign up for updates

Share your story

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'This generation is changing the world.' Naples teen starts group to help pay for kids' mental health care

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A rainbow windsock foretold the hope inside the North Naples church youth room. Anna Barry, 16, stepped to the front of crowd on a Friday evening last December. "Hello, everyone who's here so far. Judges, are you ready?" It was a trivia night, the first fundraiser for Anna's new group, Student Alliance on Mental Illness.