Category: CNN Regional

By Ted Wayman, Imani Clement

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    MILFORD, Massachusetts (WCVB) — Dozens of people gathered at a rally Sunday in Milford after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents briefly detained a 16-year-old student.

Video from traffic surveillance cameras showed Gustavo Oliveira, 16, traveling as a passenger in a white car before he was stopped by two ICE agents in downtown Milford.

Oliveira’s friends said he was detained by the agents and later released.

The traffic stop drew the attention of a large crowd as ICE agents questioned the teenager.

Oliveira’s friends said Gustavo is a student at Milford High School and is originally from Brazil.

Supporters on Sunday said they wanted to offer immigrant families their support.

“This week, another young man was detained by ICE. Gustavo was soon released, but this is the second time a young man on the cusp of adulthood has had to act with courage and grace, as we have to ask ourselves who we are as a community,” one attendee said.

Tina Ryan was among the 75 supporters who showed up at the rally.

“We’ve been delivering food to families who cannot leave home and don’t have transportation,” Ryan said. “We’re here today because we’re saddened and disgusted that ICE keeps destroying families.”

Oliveira’s friends said he is OK but was shaken up by what happened.

“They should not have gotten him because he is under 18, and he started really crying in the car,” one friend said.

In May, another Milford High School student, Marcelo Gomes da Silva, was detained for his undocumented status following a traffic stop while he was on his way to volleyball practice.

Gomes da Silva was released from ICE custody after nearly a week, his story igniting a firestorm surrounding immigration policy in Massachusetts.

On Sunday morning, ICE agents detained another man who was traveling in a minivan while on Concord Street in Sudbury.

The man, whose identity has not been revealed, was eventually taken away by ICE agents, while the female passenger he was with was left behind in their van.

WCVB reached out to ICE for comment on the Milford and Sudbury arrests, but has not heard back.

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By Alexis Crandall

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    ESSEX JUNCTION, Vermont (WPTZ) — Fall is right around the corner and that means you might be thinking about Halloween. But your search for the perfect pumpkin for a jack-o’-lantern may be harder this year.

The pumpkin farming season goes back to May and June when the seeds are planted. For some farms, including Paul Mazza’s in Essex Junction, wet soil made it harder.

“The spring made it actually really hard to get a lot of planting done because most fields were so wet you couldn’t get your tractor into them,” said farm stand manager, Kaity Mazza. “So, pumpkins went in a little bit later than we had preferred. But they still seem to be arriving on time and in good quality. Thankfully, it came around.”

They were worried about the drought, but while their crops recovered, other farms across the state weren’t as lucky.

“People don’t have a crop of pumpkins or squash because of things that happened in May or June and then we went into a drought, so compounding effects of that,” said Heather Darby, an agronomist with University of Vermont Extension. “Then other people I’ve talked to have a bumper crop of good quality pumpkins.”

At Whitcomb Farm’s new location in Essex Junction, they’re having a great year. They attribute the abundance to their land, which used to be a field of grass.

“It’s one of the best crops we’ve had in the 23 years. We thought the drought there might have hurt us, but they say once pumpkin plants are established and they’ve pollinated, we’ve got some what they call virgin pumpkin land here,” said Mary Whitcomb.

Whitcomb says their new farm is less flood-prone, which was one of the reasons for their move. It opens to the public next Saturday, Sept. 20.

At Paul Mazza’s, they have a new pumpkin house for visitors of all ages to enjoy.

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By Sarah Horbacewicz

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    EVERGREEN, Colorado (KCNC) — Just outside Evergreen, Colorado, high school senior Judah Cox finds his voice through music.

“This is how I process a lot of things. I’ll just play music. So this was just my backbone,” Judah Cox said, “Every day I at least, I kind of sit down and write a song or two.”

Before heading to Evergreen High School each day, he spends his mornings in a live music class down the road, where he was on Wednesday when he got a call from his mom.

Mom Vivian Cox said, “It hit me that Judah wasn’t there yet, and so I’m calling him and telling him to stay where he was, but I just kept screaming to my younger son, ‘Don’t hang up. Don’t you. Hang up on me!'”

At 12:24 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 10, there was a shooting at Evergreen High School. The student shooter killed himself and shot and injured two classmates. Both Judah and his brother got home safely – but shaken.

“I almost lost my children. And that’s not what any parent ever wants to think about. Is their child running for his life? That’s just not. That’s your worst nightmare come true,” Vivian Cox said.

Judah Cox added, “You hear about it all the time on the news, and it’s just horrible. But then you’re like, well, it’s not going to be my school, and then it is, and you can’t do anything about it.”

So he did the only thing he knew to share his feelings, the only way he knew how, back at his keyboard.

“But as soon as I started writing the lyrics, that’s when I really knew that this song was different. And I was just bawling at the piano as I wrote this,” Judah Cox.

The song begins saying, “When it happens in your hometown on the streets of groom up on it’s too close, when I get the call from my mama telling me my brother is still in that place.”

Judah decided to share the song on social media, and it struck a chord, one line in the song, “I don’t believe it’s about inclusion. Lord, I pray it’s about reunion with you someday.”

In just days, the song has now been heard around the world and played more than two million times.

Vivian Cox explains, “To see the impact on 2.5 million people to have that many people say, hey, me too. Like this, this in so many people that have even said, like, I don’t even believe in God, but this song made me cry.”

“It made a lot of my friends cry, which is hard to hear, but like, also, I think we all needed that,” Judah Cox said.

And as schools stay closed in Evergreen, Judah Cox plans to keep writing and help a healing community find its voice.

“I don’t understand why all this has to happen all the time. Like, this isn’t how high school is supposed to be,” Judah Cox said, “Now that I know that that song has been seen by that many people, it really brings me hope.”

“He’s taken some of the… I hope are the darkest moments of his life… and turned them all around and just reminded us that there is good and there is hope,” Vivian Cox said.

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By Spencer Wilson

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    DENVER, Colorado (KCNC) — After yet another Colorado school shooting, Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise’s message carries both grief and urgency. Her youngest son was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre more than a decade ago. Within weeks, she co-founded non-profit Sandy Hook Promise with one mission: to stop other families from enduring what she lives with every day.

“This is exhausting,” Hockley said in an interview with CBS Colorado following the Evergreen High School shooting. “I think one of the most exhausting things about this is that these acts are preventable. We have the solutions that we know work, and sometimes we just don’t have the will to make them happen.”

Since its founding, Sandy Hook Promise has trained millions of students and educators nationwide to recognize warning signs of violence. Hockley says those efforts have prevented more than 1,000 youth suicides and stopped at least 18 planned school shootings.

For her, the work is proof that prevention is possible; if people choose to act.

“We should be feeling this and saying, ‘This is unacceptable,'” Hockley said. “This is not the way America should be. There is a way to prevent these tragedies, and we need to move past normalizing this or being desensitized. None of us wants this to happen in our community, so why do we accept it when it happens to someone else?”

Hockley said the conversation should not pit mental health against gun safety. The organization says that you cannot stop these attacks without both focuses.

“There is an escalating pathway to violence that often starts with isolation or rejection,” Hockley explained. “But then you couple that with access to a weapon, and that’s when you have the tragedy. This is about the combination.”

Colorado, she noted, is on the right track with its anonymous reporting system, which allows students to safely speak up when they see warning signs. It’s the kind of tool Sandy Hook Promise advocates for: practical, bipartisan and designed to save lives.

For Hockley, the fight is as personal as it gets. She admits the rage and grief of Sandy Hook never leave her, but she channels them into a single mission, keeping children safe.

“Our kids don’t have the politics. They just want to be safe in their schools, homes and communities,” she said. “We adults have a duty to respond to that.”

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By Karen Morfitt

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    DENVER, Colorado (KCNC) — Even during months of hospitalization and recovery at Colorado Children’s Hospital, 13-year-old Allyson Haberacker found a way to leave a lasting impact not just on the hearts of those around her, but also on the hospital cafeteria menu.

Allyson was recovering from a heart transplant earlier this year when she decided something important was missing from the hospital menu: fried pickles.

“They have fries, they have onion rings, they occasionally have jalapeño poppers,” she said. “Why don’t they have fried pickles? Fried pickles are one of the main food groups.”

With the help of her child life specialist, Allyson launched what she called her “pickle petition,” a seven-page list of signatures from anyone who visited her room, including doctors, nurses, and even new friends.

“We ended up getting 276 exactly,” she said.

Her father, Joshua Haberacker, said Allyson may be quiet, but she makes her presence known.

“She may not be able to express her voice in volume, but she expresses it very much in action, unless she’s yelling at her brother. Then she can get very loud,” he joked.

The effort not only distracted her from the stress and isolation of long-term hospitalization but also gave her something to look forward to each day.

“It brought her a lot of joy,” her father said. “Especially when she was stuck day in and day out sometimes, it kind of gave her something to focus on, to move out of that depression and get excited.”

To Allyson’s surprise, hospital staff took the petition seriously.

“I really thought they would just look at it and chuckle,” she said.

They didn’t. Instead, the hospital’s food service team went to work. Soon after, “Allyson’s Fried Pickles” appeared on the grill menu.

“It’s crazy! I didn’t know they would name it after me, and then they did!” Allyson said. “I was crossing my fingers, hoping they spelled it correctly.”

Every four weeks, the item will appear on the menu; a delicious reminder of one young patient’s determination to make her stay, and the stays of others, a little better.

“People like jalapeño poppers,” Allyson said. “But they like fried pickles more.”

As for the future, Allyson isn’t quite in high school yet, but she’s already thinking ahead.

“Right now, I want to be a child life specialist, so I can help people who are like, ‘Why is this happening to me?'” she said. “I kind of understand.”

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By Frankie McLister

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    EAGAN, Minnesota (WCCO) — After Adelyn Miller died in 2023, her organs saved five lives, and four of those she saved gathered together to live out her legacy.

“Oh man, I just miss talking to her,” said Vicki Wichmann Miller, Adelyn Miller’s mother.

Adelyn Miller’s family says she was adventurous, loving and made people laugh. She was 20 years old when she was ejected from a vehicle, fracturing her skull, and died days later due to a brain herniation.

Her mother says she wanted to be a paramedic one day.

“She was very much about helping everybody else,” Vicki Wichmann Miller said.

Which is exactly what she did.

“I owe her my life,” said Dennis Golownia, who received her lungs.

Kevin Enders received her liver.

“You saved my life and I’m eternally grateful,” Enders said.

Jack Feast got Adelyn Miller’s heart.

“I just want her to know she’s changed my life,” Feast said.

Suzie Dauer now has Adelyn Miller’s kidney.

“Hopefully, she could see it in my eyes, how grateful,” Dauer said.

After Adelyn Miller’s passing, her mother reached out to her donors and heard back from four of the five.

“Being able to meet her recipients has been extremely healing to me,” Vicki Wichmann Miller said.

On Saturday, they gathered together as one big “Brady Bunch.”

Recipients and loved ones painted rocks that’ll be placed across the world. If you find one, you’ll notice a QR code linking to Adelyn Miller’s story and her impact as a donor.

“I feel like I’ve gained a whole new family with Vicki and everyone else that’s here in Minnesota,” said Feast.

Feast, who lives in Illinois, can enjoy life with his daughter again. He has also gained new friends — or as he says, “family” members like Enders, who also traveled from the Land of Lincoln for the weekend.

“The fact we’re both still alive because of Adelyn is indescribable,” Enders said.

Golownia, from the Milwaukee metro, agrees.

“I can see the scars on my chest and I still think of her,” he said.

They are all signs that Adelyn Miller’s legacy is alive.

“She really impacted a lot of people,” Vicki Wichmann Miller said.

To become an organ donor, register online through the National Donate Life Registry.

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By Trevor Sochocki

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    FORT WORTH, Texas (KTVT) — If you didn’t already know, military uniforms and various service clothes can be expensive. But a nonprofit, the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (NMCRS), operating thrift shops around the world, is changing that.

The nonprofit has a store at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.

“I’m just looking for a cheap way to not have to go break the bank to go replace my items,” said Technical Sergeant Bobby Mitchell, a reservist in the U.S. Air Force.

That’s what a lot of service members are in the thrift shop for.

“I think this would be, if it fit, it would be about ten bucks compared to about 60 or 70 bucks,” Sgt. Mitchell explained.

All the money made by the 120-year-old nonprofit goes toward providing financial and other assistance for sailors and marines in need.

“Trying to find as many uniform pieces as we can at an affordable price,” said Lieutenant Chris Branigan, a Navy Reserve chaplain.

All the used clothes, uniforms and home goods inside are donated by other military members and their families.

“I’m a pastor on a tight income,” Chaplain Branigan said. “So just trying to save where we can.”

An added bonus, military spouses get a community through the nonprofit as well.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to be part of something that gives back to our military members,” said Caitlin Gibson, chair of volunteers for NMCRS.

Last year, the Fort Worth shop donated over $41,000 to the relief society, and the 30 shops around the world donated $2 million.

“I love the environment of meeting people and getting to chat with them,” Gibson explained. “But also trying to help them find that thing they’re looking for and this just kind of went hand in glove with that.”

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