Multiple Guests

• Heart of Mary House co-founder Kim Derrick explains what she saw that moved her to create a hospice for the underserved (10:43)
• How Jeff and Kathy Long built a helpful resource they wish they'd had (18:21)
• The $20 that changed Joshua Williams's life, and started a movement (26:47)
• How Pastor Dan Johnson, one of the few ministers who came back, supports the poorest county in the nation (34:53)

FRANK BLAKE: All right. Well, first off, welcome, Megan and Brian.

BRIAN SABIN: Thank you.

MEGAN HANLON: Thank you.

FRANK BLAKE: I guess we can call it now, this is our second annual Crazy Good Turns' $10,000 donation episode.

Last year, we did this and a lot of our listeners gave us suggestions for nonprofits that we should give $10,000 to, and we thought we were going to have one winner.

Then when we went through it, we decided to destroy the excitement of who's going to get the winning $10,000 by giving four $10,000 recognition awards to people who are doing amazing things for others.

It was in my mind so inspiring last year to read the submissions from our listeners and just to find out what these organizations are doing.

We decided to do it again this year.

As I think Brian and Megan can confirm, we got a lot more submissions from our listeners. We got even more suggestions of great organizations to donate $10,000 to.

We're not even pretending this year that there's only one winner.

We started out saying, "Well, we know we'll have four or five winners of the $10,000."

To give you, our listeners, a quick summary of our process, we ask all our listeners to submit recommendations.

Many thanks to all of you for taking the time. This is truly a crazy good turn on your part to take the time to let us know about some of the people out there who are doing great things.

Then, Brian and Megan spend time going through all the submissions, actually talking to a number of the nonprofits, just a bit of a vetting process before we decide.

Then the three of us, plus Leslie Nunn, who's not on this call, but the three of us plus Leslie, we go through all the submissions and we decide who will be the winning organizations.

All the organizations are winning, but who are the organizations we're going to recognize this year with a $10,000 donation?

So I thought, given the amount of work that Brian and Megan have put into the review and vetting process, that it would be entirely appropriate to have them, as we did last year, give the overview on each of the four winning organizations.

So, first off, again, thank you, Brian and Megan, for all that work. Thank you for being here, and we'll start it off with Brian.

BRIAN SABIN: Well, thank you, Frank.

I have to say what a privilege it is to be part of this.

It is an uplifting experience and we live in this uncertain time where there's a lot of fear or negativity around the world and where it's headed.

But I would say that anyone that feels pessimistic about the future should totally do this if they can because it'll just make you feel better about the world and the extraordinary people in it, extraordinary people like this one young person we had the chance to speak with.

Her name is Rebecca Grunkemeyer, and she's a student at Vanderbilt University.

She told us about an organization she volunteers her time at.

It's called Heart of Mary House, and it provides pretty important work. You could call it hospice for the homeless.

As you said, Frank, we had the chance to interview Rebecca and others when vetting these awards.

Here's our interview with Rebecca where she describes what Heart of Mary House is like.

REBECCA GRUNKEMEYER: I heard about Heart of Mary House after I was scrolling through this group chat, and somebody posted in it about a volunteer opportunity for this home.

And I read about it and I said, huh, I've never seen anything like this. I think I want to do this.

Because I had just started my fall my freshman year, and I felt like I wanted to get involved, do something bigger than myself, and really help the surrounding community.

And so I texted two of my friends from the neighboring college Belmont, and I asked them, "Hey, would you girls want to come with me to this place called Heart of Mary House? You're supposed to take care of terminally ill patients and stuff."

And they said, "Sure."

I have amazing friends. They're absolutely beautiful souls.

So the only slot that we could do was at six AM on a weekday because all of us had class at nine AM.

So we all wake up bright and early before the crack of dawn, and then we drive over to Heart of Mary House, we knock on the door, and we're greeted by this lady.

And as soon as we get there, she says, "Okay, well the residents aren't awake yet to take care of them, but we can just have you all just sit on the couch and pray for them."

And so we sit on the couch for about an hour trying not to fall asleep. I think I did fall asleep probably the whole hour.

And as soon as the residents wake up, she says, "All right, well, let's get to work."

And so we put on gloves and the first thing we do is we start changing the resident's brief.

The first time at the job. And I was like, wow. So this is a real deal. And it was just a very humbling moment.

And then we were able to take care of the resident, really be there.

And then after that, we just went about our day. I think we went to Smoothie King or something, and then went to class the rest of the day.

But ever since then, all three of us have been going back to the Heart of Mary House as consistently as possible.

I've lived there for a month. My friend has lived there for a whole summer almost. And my friend Shannon's there going to be living there probably for at least six months.

So it's like this house has just really impacted us and we've all just had a great desire to continue to serve it.

What has surprised me from the experience of Heart of Mary House has probably just been about how some people can really get some of the worst lots in life that I've seen.

A lot of people who come here, but they come because they don't really have anyone to take care of them in their last moment.

So you just see a lot of really tragic things.

Even the lady who I was taking care of last night, she had been abused in her home, and so she was wailing and crying out and things like that, saying, "Don't hit me."

BRIAN SABIN: Now, work helping the dying might not be the thing you expect college students to do in their free time, but Rebecca and her friends have been showing up there for three years now.

REBECCA GRUNKEMEYER: With regards to what you're saying how it's kind of I guess, rare or not as common for college students to be volunteering to choose this type of work with the dying for free.

I think honestly, for me, it's every day can kind of be almost like just a paradigm shift, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, going into this house had been a paradigm shift because it really makes you think about what really matters.

When you're young and when you're healthy, and when you have so much freedom, you don't ever really think about that, that could be you one day.

And so going there has really helped me shift my thinking, and live in a way that I want to be proud of when I'm myself might become old and I'm dying.

But with regards to that, it's really strange because even last weekend, so I'm obviously living on a college campus, and I was talking to somebody.

And they're telling me about this crazy party they had, and how they got injured at the party and they were just drunk and all these things.

And I was just trying to listen, okay. And then the next night I was taking care of a dying patient, and feeding her, and helping her drink and changing her.

And it's just seeing those two kind of contrasts, it's definitely something that makes me want to encourage college students to think more about the deeper things of life, and realize that the actions they're making now will affect them in the future.

BRIAN SABIN: Heart of Mary House is small. It can only serve two or three patients at a time.

To be a patient, a person must have a terminal prognosis, right?

Three months to live or less, and a do not resuscitate order. So, the people that are there are coming up on the end.

REBECCA GRUNKEMEYER: We've had people who have experienced homelessness who have come to the Heart of Mary House.

And again, we don't really turn anyone away for any reasons except safety reasons.

So people who have experienced homelessness or people who have really poor relationships with family members, maybe they're estranged or something like that, or they've been abandoned or things like that by their family.

So it depends. There have been some people who have stable family members, but the family members just yet aren't potentially financially able to take them in.

And a lot of times, those family members will come visit.

But we've had even really beautiful stories of where the person came to the house because their family members wouldn't take them in.

They wouldn't even see them or talk to them.

And then before they died, they had complete reconciliation with their wives, or with their children, or whoever it was who they needed to have that closure with.

And so it's been beautiful to see miracles like that happen with so many patients.

BRIAN SABIN: So, now, let's talk about how Heart of Mary House came to be. The house was founded by Kim Derrick, a former hospice nurse who felt called to do something more.

KIM DERRICK: I'll have to piggyback off of Rebecca and say the Holy Spirit just hijacked a desire that I had.

I worked as a hospice nurse for about 12 years. And when I first started in hospice, it was in admissions and doing home hospice.

And immediately saw the disparity of people who were just really struggling to take care of their loved one, or people who had absolutely no one.

I'd enter the house as a nurse and it would be unlocked, and the person would be bed bound, and they would just leave the door unlocked so that we could get in.

And maybe people would check on them a couple of times, but just terribly underserved.

And we just would keep hearing from the higher ups.

Well, you just have to meet people where they are.

And I thought, gosh, surely we can do better than that, surely?

And so time went on and I took a job as a liaison with hospice going in hospitals.

And my job was to introduce hospice to people who had just been given a terminal prognosis, and get them where they need to go, whether it be back home, back to their assisted living, into a nursing home.

And just week after week after week, it would be I would arrive to the floor and the social worker would say, "Well, this is a difficult placement."

And that would mean this person has nowhere to go.

And we would all be putting our heads together trying to scramble to find placement for them.

And all too often they would be just left in the hospital, which is an acute care place.

It's not a place of comfort. And the staffing just isn't feasible to care for someone who's needing that kind of care.

So I was just with a friend, a philanthropist at a baseball game, catching up out of COVID. I think it was about May of '21.

So everybody was coming back out and going to baseball games and stuff.

And he was asking me how my hospice experiences were going. He had cared for people in his home too, like family members.

And I just shared with him, because especially through COVID, that was really the just huge kicker of it all.

Just because no one was leaving and it just really secured it in my heart.

And so I shared with him just the disparity, and he said, "Well, let's do something about that."

And I said, "Well, what do we do?" And he said, "Just start researching it."

And little by little doors started opening

BRIAN SABIN: Since they opened in 2022, Heart of Mary House has operated out of a 900 square foot facility.

Those who stay there require care around the clock, and while trained professionals handle the residents' hospice and healthcare needs, volunteers like Rebecca and her friends provide companionship, support, and any other help they can.

Heart of Mary House founder Kim says these volunteers make an extraordinary difference.

KIM DERRICK: People like Rebecca, that was not a part of the plan.

In preparing for this house, never did it enter my mind that we would have so many college kids.

And you mentioned, that's not what you were doing in college.

We have, I don't even know, Rebecca, like 10 or so or more guys that come almost every Saturday and spend the day there.

These are not clinical students. These are not kids that are going off and doing anything clinical in their career.

They're just kids that see that they have a surplus in something, where someone else has a deficit, and that they can use their leftover and abundance to fill this other person's cup.

And that's been one of the most inspiring things to me.

BRIAN SABIN: I have to say, Frank, that's inspiring to me too, that so many kids would show up and serve week after week with no expectation of payment or even acknowledgement is just awesome.

So, for all of those reasons, I'm so glad we could gift a $10,000 award to the Heart of Mary House. Thank you, Frank.

FRANK BLAKE: Thank you, Brian. That's terrific and what a great organization.

For each one of the people that Megan and Brian interviewed, we also asked the question we ask all of our guests, who's done a crazy good turn for you?

We're not going to give you everybody's answer to that. That would be a very, very long episode in that if we did that.

But I do want to play part of Mary House's answers, Rebecca's answer to that because it is so telling.

First, she tells a little bit of a story about herself on herself where something that she had done wrong and then how someone else very generously addressed that problem.

It is such a sweet and wonderful example of someone doing a crazy good turn.

REBECCA GRUNKEMEYER: Okay, mine's a little funny because it actually has to do with the Heart of Mary House.

But basically I mentioned how last summer I lived at the Heart of Mary House, or no, sorry, pardon.

Not last summer. Two summers ago, after my freshman year of college, I lived at the Heart of Mary House.

And so how it works is the residents are all at the bottom of the apartment, but then the live-in volunteers stay upstairs.

I had my own area upstairs, and I also had a car, which was given to me by Jamie, who's the co-founder along with Kim.

I would use this car when I would commute to buy groceries or babysit when I wasn't at the house and things like that.

But one day as I'm driving this car, all of a sudden I'm on the highway.

I had just filled up my gas, but strangely enough, it starts breaking down. And I'm trying to press the gas and it's not working.

I'm on the way to pick up my friend from the airport and it just sputters to a stop almost in the middle of the highway.

Thankfully, cars can go around me, but I'm freaking out. Don't know what to do.

So I call Jamie, the co-founder who lent me the car. I let him know what happens.

The police has to get there, I have to get my car towed, everything like that.

And then he asked me later, why do I think the car broke down?

And I thought about it and I said, well, I went to the gas station and filled up my tank, but cars can run on diesel, right?

So I had filled up this car with diesel because I didn't... Just a 19-year-old girl, what do I know about cars?

I should know more than that. So this car is obviously basically ruined.

It was already a little bit beat down of a car, but pretty expensive thing.

And so he gets it to the shop of one of his friends, Packard Shell in Nashville.

And I was freaking out because obviously I'm a college student, I don't have the money to repair this.

But the nice man over there, his name's Bill Packard, he does the whole thing for free.

He just fixes the car, gets it taken care of, changes everything.

Several thousand dollars, couple thousand and says, "It's on me."

FRANK BLAKE: So, a terrific story and a good opportunity to turn it over now to Megan.

Megan, if you'd tell our listeners one of the organizations that you thought was particularly significant.

MEGAN HANLON: Sure. Thank you very much, Frank.

One of the organizations that we picked as a winner of the $10,000 award was Teens4TeensHelp, and that is a nonprofit in the Greater Los Angeles area that helps young people who are suffering from mental health or emotional struggles.

It's an online peer-to-peer platform where teens can find encouragement, education, and the self-motivation to choose recovery.

It was founded by Jeff and Kathy Long after their daughter went through a very tough time. It was a great and inspiring story that they shared with us, and I will let them explain.

JEFF LONG: So we came to it honestly, in ninth grade, our daughter was struggling.

And we took her to a therapist and the wheels fell off, and she quit eating.

She was diagnosed with anorexia, depression, anxiety, a host of comorbidities.

And it immediately launched us into a four-and-a-half year journey of recovery.

It was hospitals and residentials, and treatment centers and everything we could think of and afford.

We were very lucky that, at some point, she chose to try to recover after choosing trying to kill herself.

And so we know we're one of the lucky ones.

At the end of her final treatment center, she spoke at a high school, very brave for somebody with social anxiety.

KATHY LONG: Yeah.

So she spoke at a high school with her treatment center, and then the next year she was out of treatment, but the school specifically asked for her to come back, speak again.

And so she did.

And afterwards, a young man came up to her and asked if he could give her a hug.

She said, sure, but why?

And he said, well, last year I was trying to figure out how I was going to kill myself, and I heard your story, and I reached out for help, and thank you.

And so she came home so elated that her story had made a difference, and that everything she'd been through impacted one person's life.

And so that was kind of our "aha" moment that we knew that treatment centers send alumni in to talk to the kids in the treatment centers.

And that was one of Kara's favorite things.

And so we know that teens are best to their peers. And these stories can save lives. And so it wasn't online, it didn't exist.

And so we said to Kara, if we create a platform where these stories can be posted, so that anybody with an internet connection can see them, would it be helpful?

And she said, it would've saved me years of suffering.

And so it was COVID, and we were kind of all in. And so that was kind of the beginning.

There were obviously many steps that we took to get the platform up and running, including creating a professional advisory board, which is incredibly important.

Because everything has to be approved through that professional lens.

JEFF LONG: And the teen advisory board, because everything that goes on our site has to be approved by our youth board, as well as the professional board.

We want it double filtered.

And we kind of created a funnel where it starts off with the stories of recovery, so kids can hear other kids, and know they're not alone.

That somebody else has gotten through it. This is how they got through it, and this is what they recommend and encourage them.

And then underneath that, there's animated short videos about the topic.

Like, what's anxiety in my body? How do you treat it? What are the coping skills?

And then narrated by teens.

And then underneath that are resources, tons and tons of resources.

Because we want to get people from, I have a problem, to I have a place to get help as soon as possible.

KATHY LONG: And so we created the platform, and over, it's been three years, and so the youth board has grown.

We were very fortunate to get a grant through the Lady Gaga Kindness and Community Foundation grant, with Cotton on, and that was able to hire our youth board manager.

So now we're full steam ahead, and the youth board is more and more involved.

They have committees, and they do different projects, as well as giving input into what we're doing.

JEFF LONG: They're creating programs to speak in schools and help other teens.

They're working on social media to connect to more teens.

Even though we're very small out of our garage, kind of a nonprofit, we're catching on fast.

We've been seen in 60 countries. We have youth board members from around the United States.

We know it's working because we hear these stories time and time again.

Where some girl in North Carolina, her therapist said, go to the website, watch this other girl's story.

And she did. And she was like, I'm not the only one. There's somebody else out there like me.

And it just takes the monkey off their back. And it reduces the stigma.

And she was then inspired to get through her treatment.

And when she did, she called us up and said, I want to share my story, and help another teen the way your story helped me.

And that's the perfect circle for us. Is we want teens helping teens. Because that's the secret sauce.

MEGAN HANLON: The platform is free and accessible anywhere, anytime, and it provides a way to hear from other teens about how they got through their mental health and emotional challenges through videos and testimonials and other resources.

Here, Jeff and Kathy will explain some of the organization's day-to-day activities.

KATHY LONG: Lots of outreach, because we are still grassroots.

But we are a free mental health resource.

And so on Friday we had a great meeting with the local county behavioral health department.

And they were super excited to be able to share that with different areas within their organization. The behavioral health.

And so we do lots of outreach, and we also do outreach to treatment centers because yes, they can use us, and they have used us, and family and individual sessions.

But also their alumni can be our stories.

And we know that when teens put themselves in that mentorship position of telling their story, it really supports and gets their recovery even further along the road.

So it's a powerful thing for them to be able to share their story.

JEFF LONG: And then also, on a daily basis, we're looking for funding, we're creating videos, we're meeting with our youth board manager.

We're having executive board meetings. And our once a month youth board meetings. And there's a lot that goes on it.

Of course, we have an accountant. Of course, we have to pay for insurance. Of course, we have to meet with our web person.

So we're juggling.

MEGAN HANLON: What stood out to me about Teens4Teens is its successful use of the peer-to-peer outreach.

When struggling teens can hear a diagnosis or an explanation from someone who is their own age and they see themselves in another survivor, something really clicks.

That's one of the things that I really liked about this organization was that they're doing a very important service, but they're doing it in such a way that is reaching people through a way that nobody had previously done or at least that we hadn't heard about.

Here, we'll let Jeff explain how they're doing it.

JEFF LONG: And what we discovered is who loves us and who uses us a lot are therapists in treatment centers, because a lot of times the struggling teen is not going to open up, and we hear it in our stories, "I didn't open up my first, second or third therapist. I finally did, and my life changed."

And the therapists go, "Gosh, I got a kid. They got a problem. This kid's got the same problem. I'll show it to them," and boom, it opens them up, and then they want to get through treatment and they start working because you have to do the work.

And we know our videos are used in individual sessions and sometimes in group sessions unbeknownst to us.

MEGAN HANLON: This is a really incredible organization that shows teens they're not alone. Someone else has experienced this and survived, and this is how.

The videos have been viewed in 60 countries and the organization has youth board members around the country.

We received 20 nominations just for this organization. So, clearly, they're affecting a lot of people.

If anybody would like to learn more, they can go to their website, teens4teenshelp.org.

FRANK BLAKE: Well, thanks, Megan. It's an amazing organization.

I love the fact there's reference at the end there that professional therapists use this team for team communication so much.

It's really an inspiring story.

MEGAN HANLON: That really stood out to me too, Frank, and it's so validating for them that here they've got this program that's working and that professionals are saying here, if we can't reach this child, this teenager, then maybe this will work.

It seems like it's helping. So, that's amazing to me.

FRANK BLAKE: You had another organization, Megan, to discuss?

MEGAN HANLON: I did, yes.

So, Joshua's Heart Foundation is one that also really stood out to me.

It's located in Miami Beach, Florida, and this is a youth-run organization working to combat hunger.

This one just had an amazing backstory.

Joshua was just four years old when he felt compelled to help somebody that he saw on the street.

With the help of his family, he set up the foundation when he was seven and it's been going for almost 20 years now.

So, I'll let Joshua explain how Joshua's Heart Foundation came to be.

JOSHUA WILLIAMS: The story of Joshua's Heart starts with a $20 bill.

When I was four and a half years old, I was on my way to church and I was leaving home and my grandmother gave me $20 to go to Toys R Us and buy whatever I wanted with it.

And my mother was driving and we were in North Miami and stopped at an intersection and I was in the back seat and outside the window was a man with a cardboard sign that said, "Need food. Lost my job, living on the streets."

And it was, again, I was four and a half, I didn't really understand the full consequence or situations of it, but there was an emotional burden that came about that and an emotional revitalization.

I would say existential revitalization really. And it was a hard feeling for me.

I didn't really understand what it was, but I knew that I wanted to help him out and I wanted to do something for him.

And I asked my mom to give him the $20 that she was holding for me.

She said, "No, only gave him a dollar."

She knew more about the complexities of the issues at hand versus me at that time and me being stubborn, I told her that it's my money and granny told me I could do what I wanted with it.

And she did could it out to him.

So this was the first time that I gave something back into my community and this is how I learned about hunger and poverty, which were the first social issues that represented to me.

A couple of weeks later, I was watching TV on a Sunday again and there was a commercial from Feed the Children.

Great nonprofit, does work all around the world.

And they had a commercial advertisement on the impact of food and hunger in Northern Africa and a lot of the genocides, a lot of the droughts and famines that are going on there, the civil wars, et cetera.

And it was just very touching and emotional for me, again, seeing kids who were five and four going through things that I could never imagine, and I don't want to say there was a guilt part of it, but there was a connecting part and the realization of humanity between all of us.

And through those two events, I wanted to do something in my community and I wanted to do more.

I went to my mom and asked her to help me do something in the community to feed kids, just to help out in any way that we could.

She kind of brushed me aside of course, and I kept doing that for a good while.

And then, forgot the word, sorry, but I went to my aunts after my mom said no, and I asked them to help me do something and they were more supportive. They said, "Sure."

And three weeks later, nothing happened. I kept asking them. Six weeks went by and I had to move on, so I fired them and I moved on.

I went back to my mom who was my only option there, and I asked her to help me do something again.

But this time I had to be a little bit more strategic about it.

So every day on the way to school for about six months, I was about five at the time.

I would ask her to a few people on the way to school, on the way back to school.

She was sick and tired of it after a while and said she would help me out. And we banded the family together.

We're Jamaicans by origin and my family, my grandma, my aunts, my cousins.

We would all come together and we would just cook a bunch of Jamaican food and put it into those to-go containers, give it out to local homeless populations.

We were feeding five people on a weekend. Within six months we were feeding 50, 100.

And within two years we were feeding 200 people every week.

And this was just family-oriented, friends and family, just us coming together.

And we had to stop that in 2008, I believe, 2007 and a half because we did not have the right licensing permits, et cetera, giving out all the food, which makes sense.

So we put on hold for six months and my aunt heard about 501(c)(3) on the radio.

She told my mom about it, she told me, she said, "If you want to keep doing it, this is the only way forward." And I said, "Well, let's do it."

And that's how Joshua's Heart was born.

MEGAN HANLON: This organization has a dual crazy good turns going on, a good turn within a good turn because it helps both the clients, the people who are facing food insecurity as well as getting kids involved at a young age and giving them marketable skills and life skills that normally take years to develop as an adult.

That really stood out to me.

Before Joshua and his family began the foundation, they had looked for a place where he could volunteer, but because he was just seven, there weren't many places that allowed children to help.

So, when they began Joshua's Heart Foundation, they enshrined youth activity as a pillar with the goal of educating and empowering young people through a network that extends into college and adulthood.

Claudia McLean, who is both Joshua's mother and the executive director of the foundation, explains more.

CLAUDIA MCLEAN: So one of the things is when our volunteers start young, they always, the only thing that prevents them from keep coming is when school gets real hectic and then they'll apologize and say, "Oh my God, I had so much homework or work and then I have to do this."

Maybe they're doing some after school activities, "Is there any way I can find a way to help?"

But they stay with us right through when they start whatever age, they graduate high school, and then when they leave and come back on vacation, they check in.

And then when they go off to college, the ones who are currently in, they become mentors for them.

So they're going to a college, they're like, "Oh, do you have any JAB members at this school or that school?"

We're like, "Sure, we'll check in." Connect them.

And then they maybe mentor them or just show them around the college campus or tell them what classes to take or whatever it is.

But we do have a big network, I must say. Every now and again, I talk about it, I'm still flabbergasted. I'm like, wow.

MEGAN HANLON: Wow is right.

Over the past 20 years, Joshua's Heart Foundation has worked with about 60,000 volunteers and has assisted more than 600,000 people, but they say positively impacting even one life is worth it.

Claudia explains here.

CLAUDIA MCLEAN: Let me give you one last story.

Yesterday we had an event in North Lauderdale and this lady, she said, "When I heard that you guys are coming back to that area, I send it to everyone I know in my community to tell him, 'Listen, Joshua's Heart is going to be here. They give good stuff. It's not just the regular food bank stuff. They have good stuff.'"

And she was like, "Thank you so much. You have no idea how much you help."

And then she made me started feeling really, I felt good, but I was sad because knowing that she's still in need and she had to call everyone who was also in need to come and get the item because they were getting not just food, but they were getting toiletries and household stuff and they need it.

So just having her reached out and thank us felt good because it was a hot day. It was really hot and hard, but just knowing that you affected one life, I think it's a huge difference.

It's a lot of work, but at the end of the day, you're like, it's good.

MEGAN HANLON: That is good. Joshua's Heart was nominated by more than a dozen of our listeners.

In the future, Joshua, Claudia, and their teams hope to be able to expand the organization to increase reach both in their local area and then throughout the State of Florida.

It's just a fantastic organization and it's gotten national attention, including the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 and recognition from Pepsi, Hormel, Nickelodeon, CNN, just to name a few.

To learn more about Joshua's Heart Foundation, you can go to joshuasheart.org.

It's just a really amazing organization on several levels.

FRANK BLAKE: Fantastic. Thank you, Megan.

We'll be providing information on all of the winning organizations on our website.

So, for any of our listeners who are interested, and I hope there are a lot who might be inspired themselves to give to these organizations, they can find that information on our site.

So, thank you. Brian, one more, would you give us the story that really connected with you?

BRIAN SABIN: Absolutely, Frank.

Our next story takes us to the southwest corner of South Dakota, just outside of the Black Hills, to a place called Pine Ridge Reservation.

There we're going to meet a man named Pastor Dan Johnson. Here's how he describes the area where he lives today.

PASTOR DAN: My name is Pastor Dan Johnson.

I used the pastor title because in town, most of the people only know me as Pastor Dan. I jokingly say that they don't know my last name.

In fact, I've gotten paperwork from the tribe asking for my last name. I am a third career pastor.

I moved here four years ago in the middle of the COVID Pandemic and took over the operation of the center, which has been around for 44 or 45 years.

We are in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, which is on the Pine Ridge Native Reservation or Indian reservation of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, home of Chief Red Cloud. This is the poorest county in the country.

We have roughly 80 some percent poverty rate, 80% unemployment, suicides triple the national average. And the life expectancy of an adult male here is 48.

BRIAN SABIN: Dan is in his 60s and describes himself as a third career pastor.

He enjoyed careers in sales and engineering before enrolling in seminary later in life.

It was his studies that led him first to the reservation.

PASTOR DAN: Late in life, I felt a call to ministry.

And while I was in seminary, I had to take a cross-cultural course and Pine Ridge was one of the options.

I came out here in part because it was a shorter length of time because it was a very intense.

You were in it 24/7 for the length of the time, and I fell in love with the place.

I fell in love with the people that I met. I fell in love with the beauty of the area.

Enough so that the next year I brought a group of 10 middle school girls from my church with me for a trip.

And during that visit, my now-predecessor broached the topic of me coming out here, saying that everybody says they're coming back. You're one of the few that actually came back.

She felt I had the temperament for out here.

My background because of my role as chief, cook, bottle washer, financial guy, you name it, I've got to do it.

And then you need to be able to be a counselor, whether you're a licensed counselor or not.

You spend a lot of time listening to people.

And so I called my wife that night and said, "Hey, you want to move to South Dakota?" And she said, "Sure, when are we going?" And I replied, "No, no, no, no, no."

She's laughing in the background. Sorry about that.

But I said, "No, you have to come see this place because this is not the same as what you're used to."

And so we arranged that fall to come out here and met with my predecessor, the current staff, and there was a group here.

So I got to spend some time with the group that was here.

And the decision was made that I was going to go for it. And I came out here July of 2020.

Nothing big going on in July of 2020. Everything was normal.

The next year I received a grant from the State of South Dakota to help address homelessness caused by COVID.

And then that winter between my partner and myself, we took over operating the homeless shelter in town. And my building is used as a day shelter.

It's the only place they can come take showers, get laundry done, get casework done, apply for jobs, have a safe place to talk to people, work on their issues.

We've expanded it since to, we now offer support groups, either AA, NA, celebrate recovery or a grief support group six days a week.

And I am a pastor, but I don't have a church here.

I work with a couple of the local small churches and help out when they need me, but I do not have my own church.

That was not my focus when I came here. My focus was ministering to and with the Lakota people.

During the winter, we averaged 50 people a night at the night shelter.

We have two levels of care at the night shelter, we have what we call our transition program where they're working to get better.

They're clean, they're sober, they can pass a drug test, they can pass a breathalyzer, and they are doing things to improve their life.

They get a permanent bed, they get a place to store their stuff, they get TVs, computers, access to other items there.

And then we have the low barrier, which we only operate during the cold months, and that is as long as you're behaving, you can stay with us.

But that means we get a lot of people that come in that are either high or are very drunk, and they get a mat, a blanket and a pillow and that's it.

And they have to pack it up in the morning when they leave.

We do feed everybody. During the winter, we were averaging $5,000 a week in food.

We were providing seven or three meals a day, seven days a week.

So it was an experience. And all my staff is Lakota that provided all these meals.

They did all the cooking, and I think we did an incredible job of providing nice meals, not just a bowl of soup every night.

We average about 80 people a day coming through my building, the day shelter.

Because we have a number of people that may have a home, but it's really not well-equipped.

I know of one family, there's eight people living in a trailer that has no running water and no electricity, so they come to the shelter during the day to stay warm and take showers and get fed.

We have a number of people like that that may be housed, but really are under-housed.

BRIAN SABIN: So, the reservation and its residents face several pretty significant challenges, but Dan says he has seen a lot of progress during the past four years.

We asked him what success looks like and here's what he told us.

PASTOR DAN: First off, nobody died today.

And I hate to say it that way, but we know of several people that died because they weren't with the shelter. They're safe, they're kept safe with us.

We have successes.

We had an 18-year-old boy whose adoptive family decided they were done with him, didn't want him anymore.

They literally dropped him off at the homeless shelter in January and told him, "We don't want you anymore. You're never going to amount to anything."

He's 18 years old. Working with him, he actually graduated high school.

While living in a homeless shelter, he graduated high school and the homeless community went to his graduation ceremony to cheer him on.

We have another girl who at 18 was dropped off the same way. Mom said, "I don't want you anymore. You got to stay here."

And she now works for me, just does odd jobs. But she works for the center.

And she is back in school and last spring she got to go to prom. So I consider that a win.

We have a single mom with six kids who we helped move out of an abusive situation and into her own place, and she is now thriving with those kids and the kids are thriving.

And it's not perfect, but she's doing really well comparatively. To me, that's a win.

Those incredible stories give me hope.

The single mom who's working two jobs to help make sure she takes care of her family, and I know she takes care of extended family also.

We have two young adults that are now enrolled in the local college and they have a chance to get degrees to where they can help others.

I think the other thing that gives me hope is all the people that I walk around town and all the people that come up to me and seem to know who I am and thank me for what we're doing for the people.

And so at least I know it's not being ignored or not seen.

And so it's kind of nice to, it's not a pat on the back, but every once in a while it makes you feel good to be appreciated.

And that is, I actually had a gentleman who when he first met me, made it very clear he did not want me here, did not want me in the reservation, that they didn't need any church people, all the rest.

And now he's one of my biggest advocates. Because he learned that I'm here for caring for people, not for anything personal.

And so that gives me hope, that we can change some minds of people.

So there are things that bring hope.

BRIAN SABIN: I find a lot of hope in those stories too.

I so admired Dan for following this calling he felt later in life.

I just think it's extraordinary to drop everything he knew and to help another community. That's totally amazing.

So, I'm grateful to be able to share Dan's story on the show today, and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity for our podcast to grant Pine Ridge assistance. Thank you, Frank.

FRANK BLAKE: Thanks, Brian.

Dan's story reminds me of when I was at Home Depot, we had an ad. It was my favorite ad in my time at Home Depot.

It showed a Home Depot truck going down a road, and you saw clear skies in one direction to the left and a storm in the other direction to the right.

The truck's going down the road and it turns toward the storm bringing help to people impacted by a storm.

I thought of that as Dan was going through the description of the Indian Reservation of 80% poverty rate, 80% unemployment, suicides triple the national average, the poorest county in the country.

This man turns toward the need. In a way, that's true of every single one of these recipients.

I think every one of us at Crazy Good Turns, we're just thrilled to be able to do this.

Again, thank all of you, our listeners, who took the time to give us the information on these charities, which are mostly fairly small and distinct, but doing just amazing things for others.

Consistent with our problem last year where we thought we were going to do one $10,000 award and ended up with four, this year, we thought we were going to do five.

We've got four that we've highlighted for $10,000, but we also had a hard time deciding amongst all the rest and thought it was unfair to have to decide among the rest.

So, we're going to give an additional $2,500 to the following four organizations and then $1,000 to another five.

I'm just going to briefly go through them.

We'll have more information on our website because these are just extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.

For the $2,500 grant, I'd like to start with an organization called StreetSafe Lifesaving Driving Experience, which is located in Wilmington, North Carolina.

I'll be honest on this, this is very much a personal connection.

The person involved in non-profit is a man named Mike Rossi. I have known Mike for a long time.

I worked side by side with Mike in a Home Depot in Wilmington, North Carolina that my son happened to be the store manager of.

Mike contributes to this non-profit that teaches teenagers basically how to drive, how to drive safely, because we have such an epidemic of accidents among teens and drivers between the age of 16 and 19.

Mike is one of the impact speakers at this organization because he lost his son in 2010 due to an impaired driver.

He's seen firsthand how students' attitudes change after taking the course. More than 100,000 teens have been through this program.

So, really, Mike is such a wonderful person, and this is such a wonderful example of someone taking a personal tragedy and then turning to help others to prevent those sorts of tragedies.

So, thank you, Mike, and thank you, StreetSafe Lifesaving Driving Experience, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Crazy Good Turns is also going to give $2,500 to Canine Assistants.

This organization trains and places service animals with those who have special needs, including multiple sclerosis, type one diabetes, seizure disorders, and more.

The interesting thing to us, we didn't really understand or certainly I didn't understand how expensive it is to train these dogs.

Canine Assistants gives the dogs at no cost to the recipients.

The average cost for training a dog is $3,500. So, it's an extraordinary thing that they're doing for the people who need the help.

Canine Assistants can make such a difference to people in lots of different circumstances. So, thank you. We're thrilled to be able to give them $2,500.

The third recipient is Good Knights of Lorain County, that's in Ohio. Knights is spelled K-N-I-G-H-T-S, so Good Knights of Lorain County.

The group assembles and delivers beds to needy children, including a frame, mattress, sheets, blanket, pillow, teddy bear.

They were founded by Roger Dorsey, who grew up without a good place to sleep after his mother fled from domestic violence, and he wanted to help other children who might otherwise sleep on the floor.

Since 2020, this organization has provided more than 3,000 beds for children in Lorain County. So, thank you, Roger. What a terrific effort.

Finally, on the $2,500 winners, Lekotek of Georgia, which is a very unique nonprofit that serves children with special needs by providing them with adapted toys and technology for their playtime to ensure that every child, regardless of ability, can participate in play and learning with their peers, family, and community.

So, every one of those organizations, just a terrific organization, as you could tell.

I don't know, Brian or Megan, if you want to pitch in on how difficult it is. We had so many wonderful submissions, but I don't know, Megan, if you want to say anything, or Brian, you want to say anything?

MEGAN HANLON: It was hard for sure.

I mean, there were over a hundred submissions this year, and while we did get several organizations that had many people that wanted to nominate them and have them recognize, just the breadth of organizations from environmental to food insecurity, to, like you said, building beds.

It was an amazing experience to be able to see all of the people around the country who are spending their time, their days, helping others.

Like Brian said earlier, it was really uplifting for us, but it was also a very difficult decision to try to narrow it down because they're all worthy.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah, absolutely right.

BRIAN SABIN: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Choosing from amongst this pool of very impressive, very worthy cause was difficult.

As I mentioned earlier though, it was also tremendously inspiring and uplifting. I just wish we had more.

I just wish that we had all the resources in the world to support all this stuff because so many people are doing such extraordinary stuff.

So, I'm proud to be part of this and see us be able to do what we can.

So, I just want to say again, Frank, thank you for having us be part of this and for doing this on behalf of these causes.

FRANK BLAKE: And then the final one, so even within the $2,500, I struggle on how to draw the line and I could keep going, but we will also be contributing $1,000 to each of the following five organizations: the Bashor Homeless Men's Shelter, Hydrocephalus Walk Wichita, Hope of the Lake, Feeding America, and Project Cold Case.

Each has its own reason. They're close to my heart or compelling stories.

I want to again, just say thank you to every one of our listeners who takes the time to write in about the great things that others are doing.

I believe that that's one of the most important things we can do, which is recognize and celebrate others who are doing wonderful things.

So, this thank you goes particularly to our listeners. We will for sure make this a third annual event next year. We are looking forward to it.

I hope we get even more submissions and even more difficult decisions.

Thank you again, Brian and Megan, for all the work you put into this. It's a wonderful reassuring thing to see how many people are doing crazy good turns for others.

BRIAN SABIN: Absolutely. I got to say, wow, Frank, for those listening, we didn't even know that that was going to happen until right now.

So, Frank, thank you for your generosity on behalf of these causes, and I'm so excited to do this again next year.

FRANK BLAKE: Thank you all.