14 Good News Stories from 2022 That Will Make You Smile
John Cena breaks a world record by granting more than 650 wishes for sick kids
John Cena is famous for being a 16-time WWE world champion, but it turns out the wrestler has a heart even bigger than his biceps—and his soft spot is kids with critical illnesses.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation works with celebrities, community leaders and families to grant wishes for extremely ill children, and Cena has partnered with the foundation for 20 years. This year, he broke the record for the number of wishes granted by fulfilling more than 650 of them. (To understand just how impressive this is, you should know that the next record holder has granted 200 wishes.)
“If you ever need me for this, ever, I don’t care what I’m doing. I will drop what I’m doing and be involved because I think that’s the coolest thing,” Cena told the WWE. “I just drop everything, [and] if I can offer a fantastic experience, I’ll be first in line to do my part.”
You may not be a pro wrestler, but you can still make a huge difference. Check out these charities where your donation goes the furthest.
“Layaway angels” save Christmas for needy folks
A beautiful new trend took over during the 2022 holiday season: Anonymous do-gooders paid off other people’s store layaway accounts as an act of kindness.
Lisa, a single mom with partial paralysis, was the beneficiary of one of these “layaway angels.” Months ago, she’d put toys and clothes into a layaway program at Burlington. It was a tough year, and by Christmastime, she still didn’t have the money to purchase her children’s gifts. Not only would she lose the items she’d picked out specially for them, but she’d also lose her layaway deposit. There was no easy solution—she simply didn’t have the cash.
Then she got a call from a representative of the Burlington store with good news. An anonymous couple, who appeared to be in their mid-20s, had come into the store and paid off nearly $500 in layaway items, including those belonging to Lisa. “They were interested in items that had been on layaway for the longest time,” the store rep told her. “The man just said he wanted to do something nice for the Christmas season.”
Lisa’s story isn’t the only one touched by layaway angels this year. Reports from all over the country are popping up on social media, with grateful shoppers sharing how they discovered their held items had been paid off for them, often in full.
Layaway angels prefer to stay anonymous, so Lisa took to the news to publicly thank hers. “I really appreciate it,” she told Colorado’s KOAA News 5, “and I want to say thank you to whoever that was that went out there and did that.”
Facebook DNA sleuths help a woman find her birth father
After a brief summer fling in the 1980s, Joseph Frank forgot all about the affair. But in October 2022, the memories came back when his former flame’s daughter contacted him out of the blue. It turns out she was his daughter too.
Adrieanna Tyler was raised by her stepfather but always yearned to know her biological dad, so earlier this year, she took a DNA test and posted her quest in a Facebook group that helps reunite family members through genealogy. One of the internet sleuths helped her build her biological family tree and track down her father.
“She said she’d put me in touch with my dad, and I was so nervous! How do you just call someone and ask, ‘Are you my dad?’ He had no idea I’d ever been born,” she told Good News Network. Fortunately, Frank was thrilled to discover he had another daughter and two grandchildren. “When he found out about me, he was so excited, and it was such a relief,” Tyler said. “I felt so vulnerable before, in case he wanted nothing to do with me.”
Now the two are planning their futures together, with plenty of visits and phone calls. “I feel like I can finally start to heal now [that] I’m not wondering why he didn’t want me—when all this time it was because he didn’t even know I existed,” she said. “Everything ended up exactly how it was supposed to.”
If you love good news stories, you’ll appreciate these uplifting quotes.
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