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A bingo hall saved his life in 30 seconds
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Good morning, friend.
Today's letter starts inside a fire hall in a small Pennsylvania town, then travels to a coffee shop in Jacksonville, a corner store in Guangzhou, and a quiet reef off Indonesia. Five stories, five reminders that the world keeps showing up for its own.
Grab your coffee. We are so glad you're here.
🌱 Today's Mindset
The kindness you practice is the kindness you carry.
There is an idea in emergency medicine that people who train for a crisis do not rise to the moment. They fall to the level of their preparation.
Read that again. It matters.
The nurse who runs to a stranger on the floor of a bingo hall is not brave in that moment because bravery arrived. She is calm because she has practiced being calm. The 18 year old who steadies the oxygen bag is not lucky. He took a class. He showed up to that class 3 months in a row. On a Tuesday night in August, that class saved a man's life.
This is true for kindness too. You do not become a generous person the day someone needs you. You become one every small time you paid for the coffee behind you, held a door, texted the friend you were thinking of anyway.
You are building a habit. The habit becomes a reflex. The reflex becomes who you are.
So today, if the moment is small, do the small thing anyway. Send the check in text. Compliment the stranger. Ask the follow up question.
You are not wasting the gesture. You are practicing the person you want to be when it counts.
⭐ Today's Bright Lead
Cressona, Pennsylvania
A bingo hall of 165 strangers saved Bruce Bredbenner's life in 30 seconds
Photo: Good Will Hose Company / Facebook
Bruce Bredbenner, 74, is not a bingo player. But on August 5, he saw that the Good Will Hose Company in Cressona was hosting a game for the country's 250th anniversary. He asked his wife Bev if they could stop by.
During the second game, at 6:45 pm, Bruce's heart stopped.
Within 30 seconds, 3 strangers were on the floor with him. Stacie Herring, a nurse educator, cleared his airway. Dave Clewell, a firefighter of nearly 40 years, started chest compressions. Austin Mumbauer, 18, entering his senior year at Blue Mountain High School with a fresh EMT certification, worked the bag valve mask.
"It was seamless," said Nichole Mumbauer, Austin's mother. "It was like they'd done it 100 times together." They had never met before that night.
Fire Chief Brian Mumbauer sprinted for the AED. Fire Chief Mike Pontician called 911. Someone slid a pillow under Bruce's head. Someone else sat with Bev.
By the time Schuylkill EMS arrived, Bruce had a pulse.
Doctors initially told the family to prepare for the worst. Then the tests came back. No brain damage. Full cognitive function. He is expected home in a few weeks. Bev and Bruce, married 55 years, are due to meet their first great grandchild in October.
"I don't know if they realize how many lives they've touched," Bev said.
Read the full story at EMS1 · Family GoFundMe (affiliate to good)
🌍 More Good Today
Jacksonville, Florida · Accessibility
The Naval Academy's first blind graduate built the app he wished he had
Alberto Destarac was on the pilot pipeline at Annapolis when a genetic condition, Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, took his central vision in his junior year. He chose to stay. He earned a 4.0 GPA that semester. He graduated.
Then he built Ezra, an iPhone app that sends a fully itemized receipt straight to a blind user's phone after they pay, ready for their screen reader. It went live July 1 and is free for users. His first Florida partner is Happy Brew Coffee Shop in Jacksonville. Tipping, splitting, and expenses are next.
The company motto: receipts made easy by the blind, for the blind.
Guangzhou, China · Kindness
Three schoolboys pooled 10.5 yuan to keep a store owner from giving up
Chen borrowed money 5 years ago to open a small convenience store in Guangzhou. Business kept declining. Last week he decided to close it.
On August 12, three primary school boys came in for drinks the way they always did. When they heard he was shutting down, they walked outside, emptied their pockets, and counted 10.5 yuan. That's about $1.50. They put the crumpled bills on his counter, refused to take them back, told him "hang in there," and ran off.
Chen cried. The video went national. Customers started showing up. Chen tracked the boys down and took them fishing. He gave each of them a red envelope. His three angel investors, ages 10.
Raja Ampat, Indonesia · Conservation
Sharks got rewilded. That has never happened before.
Rewilding is what you do with wolves and beavers. Nobody had ever done it with sharks. Zebra sharks, hunted almost to nothing in Indonesian waters, were down to roughly 20 adults in Raja Ampat by 2019.
So an international group of 60 aquariums across 15 countries built a plan. Ship viable eggs to nurseries in Raja Ampat and Phuket. Hire trained aquatic husbandry specialists (yes, they call them "shark nannies") to raise the pups. Release them into a 17,760 square mile protected sanctuary at about 3 feet long, satellite tagged.
Number of pups released so far: 82. They are foraging well. They are staying inside the sanctuary. Sexual maturity comes in 5 to 12 years. If the wild births start, this becomes the blueprint for every egg laying shark on earth.
🔬 Science of Joy
Washington, DC · Medicine
An mRNA cancer vaccine just passed its biggest test
This week Moderna and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine lowered the recurrence rate for melanoma in a final stage clinical trial. It is the first time an mRNA based cancer vaccine has succeeded in a large study.
Here is what makes it different from anything before it. The vaccine is custom built for each patient. Scientists take a sample from that person's tumor, run it through an algorithm, and identify up to 34 mutations most likely to trigger an immune response. The shot then teaches that specific immune system to hunt those specific cancer cells after surgery, before the cancer can come back.
The same team is already testing this approach against lung, bladder, and kidney cancers. BioNTech and Roche are running parallel trials for pancreatic and colon cancer. Long term survival numbers are still being gathered, but the door that just opened is enormous.
For decades, oncologists have wanted a vaccine that treats a tumor already in the body. This is the first one that appears to work at scale.
💛 Bright Find
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✨ One More Smile
The convenience store in Guangzhou is not closing anymore.
After the story of the three boys went viral, customers started coming from other neighborhoods just to shop there. A few brought their kids so the kids could see the counter where the 10.5 yuan sat.
Sometimes the smallest bills change the most.
See you tomorrow, friend.
The Great News Day team
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