Man who lost his family helps others

(CNN) -- Five years ago, Robert Rogers was driving home with his family from a wedding when a flash flood took his wife and four children from him in an instant.



Rainfall from a torrential downpour swept the Rogers' minivan off a Kansas highway. As water filled the van, Rogers kicked out a window in a last-ditch effort to save his family. Instead, he and his wife, Melissa, and daughter, Makenah, were sucked out of the van. Hours later, the bodies of children Zachary, 5, Nicholas, 3, and Alenah, 1, still buckled in their car seats, were found inside the van.

Rogers survived. Instead of falling into despair, he became a minister dedicated to honoring his family by preaching messages of hope in the face of adversity.

"It was a huge choice of faith," Rogers told CNN. "It was a determination to live life to honor God, to honor my heavenly family, and to make something productive out of it and not just to wallow in my pity." Watch the story of the Rogers family tragedy »

Rogers' mission manifests itself in a variety of ways. In the past five years, he estimates he has told the story of his loss at least 400 times to more than 120,000 people. The message behind his story is to live life with no regrets by embracing your family and faith.

"People have responded to me that they want to change the way they live their life. They want to have a personal relationship with God and they want to get right with their spouse and children," he said.

In addition to his speaking tours, Rogers has established a ministry dedicated to serving orphans across the world. Rogers also traveled to Haiti and tsunami-ravaged parts of Asia to minister and deliver aid to orphans. Watch Rogers talk about his ministry »

His mission is to establish five orphanages in five continents to symbolize the five family members he lost. One, called Melissa's House, already exists in Russia, where eight orphan teens live with a married couple, and another is under construction in Rwanda.

"We dedicated it in honor of Melissa because she loved being a mom and I hope she is a role model to these girls," Rogers said.


Since that fateful day five years ago, Rogers has begun to heal. He is married with one child and another on the way. More than anything, he hopes his story will inspire others to live each day to its fullest.

"We are not guaranteed the next five seconds," Rogers said. "Life is very fragile and I hope my stories and inspirations are compelling people to live that life of no regrets."

News on the Blue Marble

30 strangers lift schoolbus

Yahoo!News AFP- About 30 men lifted a schoolbus to save a pregnant woman struck by the bus enabling the baby to be born before the woman died of her injuries the New York Post said Friday.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg paid tribute to the victim, a traffic officer who was off duty when she was hit by the bus in the Bronx.

"It is a terrible poignancy that Donnette's son's birthday will now coincide with the day his mother died. She gave her life in service to our city," the mayor said.

"A superhuman effort by 30 strangers who lifted the vehicle off her body miraculously saved her baby before she died," the New York Post said.

"We did not really communicate, we all just started lifting. We lifted it up and someone pulled her out," Madalina Diaz, 42, told the paper.

The woman, six months pregnant, was rushed to the hospital, where the baby was born by caesarian section a few minutes before she died."

ABCNews: Team Apolo

"June 18, 2006 — On Feb. 20, 2002, Apolo Ohno stood atop the Olympic medalists' platforms in Salt Lake City, clutching the gold medal for the 1500-meter speed skating event. In a sense, he was standing on top of the world.

As Apolo smiled and waved to the cheering crowd, his father, Yuki Ohno, watched from the stands, his face beaming with pride.

This was more than just a crowning moment of athletic achievement. It was an emotional milestone in a once turbulent relationship between a father and the son he raised alone as a single parent.

Apolo was just one when his mother left. Yuki, a hair stylist with his own small salon in downtown Seattle, was on his own.

"I felt, you know, 'Can I do this?' " Yuki recalled. "I wasn't feeling confident at all. I was scared."

Apolo was an energetic, rambunctious little boy, so his father tried to channel that energy into sports. Apolo first tried swimming, then roller-skating. When in-line skates came into fashion, he quickly changed to rollerblading — competitive rollerblading.

"At age three, he had shown me his unusual talent, especially in his mind, to be very, very daring," Yuki said. "He shows lots of athleticism."

Apolo just thought going faster than anyone else was fun.

"He saw something in me that I didn't see in myself," Apolo said.

Yuki would work long days in his salon, then drive hundreds of miles to rollerblading competitions. He once drove all the way to Michigan from their Washington home. Apolo quickly proved to be an outstanding blader. But in his early teens, as puberty set in, Apolo's relationship with his father became strained.

The father and son who used to escape together on weekends to Iron Springs, a beach resort on Washington's Pacific coast, began to argue, frequently.

"I think there was probably a period of time where we would just fight a lot, a lot, just about anything," Apolo said. "It was mostly instigated by me, for sure."

Watching the 1998 Olympics on television, the father and son discovered speed skating — on ice. Yuki bought his son a pair of sped skates and an Olympic champion was in the making. Skating on ice around a track at up to 35 miles an hour came naturally to Apolo, so naturally, he was soon invited to join the U.S. Junior Olympic Development Team in Lake Placid, N.Y.

There was just one problem.

"I was really angry, I didn't want to go," Apolo said.

When his father dropped him off at the airport to fly to Lake Placid, Apolo waited until he left, then ran away. For two weeks, he stayed at friends' homes, sneaking in and out at night. Eventually, Yuki tracked him down and, this time, made sure he got on the plane.

Apolo quickly proved to be an Olympic-caliber speed skater. And as he got better, he liked the sport better.

"I started to realize, you know, this is kind of fun," he said. "I enjoyed speed skating and started learning more about it."

But at the trials for the 1998 Olympics, it all fell apart. Apolo finished dead last in a field of 16. He went home to Seattle in despair.

"My dad and I, we were still battling back and forth," Apolo said. "He said, 'Okay, you need to go to the ocean and contemplate, what are you gonna do?' "

For days, Apolo did little but run and think. It was a tough time for Yuki, too.



"I had to tell him," 'You have to do this alone, all by yourself in the cottage in a very rainy, cold isolated area,' " Yuki said. "It's very hard for me to tell him, but, 'You have to take this path to come to the decision on your own.' "

On the ninth day, Apolo called his dad and said simply, "I'm ready."

And he was. Having truly dedicated himself to speed skating, his confidence returned. In a matter of months, he was one of the fastest speed skaters in the world. At the Salt Lake City games, he took home a silver and gold. In Torino last winter, he bagged a gold, silver and bronze.

More important, as the years passed, Apolo began to understand what his father had sacrificed for him and what he meant to him.

"I have certain times that I have to myself, I'm on the plane or I'm in a hotel room and I think like, 'Wow' You're very grateful — you know, that I was blessed to have such great dad. And he is so supportive."



Yuki said despite the travails he came to see single parenthood as a kind of opportunity.

"It was a tremendous experience to be with your child since age one," Yuki said. "And every segment of the steps he has to go through, I was with him."

They now call themselves "Team Apolo." It is a team with a very exclusive membership: just father and son. "

CNN: Boy abandoned to the dogs gets surgery in the US

"NEW YORK (AP) -- From the right side, Daniel Wachira looks like any other bubbly 4-year-old, but Daniel was abandoned at birth and left on a trash heap in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was mauled by dogs and nearly killed.

The left side of his face is missing and he is in the United States for surgery to replace the missing jawbone, cheek and ear.

"Three minutes later, it would have been in the jugular," said Larry Jones, who with his wife, Frances, founded the Christian relief organization Feed the Children in 1979. The couple serve as Daniel's legal guardians. "He would have been gone."

The Joneses, of Oklahoma City, will head to Houston for 11 hours of surgery -- the
first of several grueling operations Daniel will have over the next 10 years -- on June 1.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Sean Boutros and other doctors at Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital are donating their services, estimated at $1 million in U.S. dollars.

Because of the shape of his mouth, Daniel has trouble forming words. But he is fluent in English and Swahili, and, sitting on the carpet in the Joneses' Midtown hotel, sang "Jesus Loves Me" in both languages.

His life so far is a Bible story -- part Moses among the bullrushes, part Daniel in the lion's den.

And, like the Biblical Adam, he will lose a rib. "They're going to take a rib out of his side and put it in his jaw so that his teeth will grow properly," Larry Jones said.

Doctors also plan to take some muscle from Daniel's shoulder to form a cheek. And in a few years, when his head is more nearly grown, they hope to make an ear out of another rib.

'I'll be a big boy'
Frances Jones said Daniel is just starting to know he is different.

"He told me that his face was broken one day," she said. "I said, 'Oh, maybe somebody could fix your face.' And he said, 'I really want that.' He said, 'I'll be a big boy."'

A good Samaritan rescued Daniel from the dogs and took him to the police. They took him to a hospital in Nairobi, where he spent eight months. He was brought to the Frances Jones Abandoned Baby Center, an orphanage run by Feed the Children in Nairobi, where he lived until flying to the United States with the Joneses two months ago.

His future is unknown. The Joneses travel frequently for Feed the Children, which provides food and other supplies to families in all 50 U.S. states and around the world, and they are in their 60s with two grown children.

"It's been a long time since we had a 4-year-old in our home," Frances Jones said.

They may seek a family to adopt Daniel. "We're taking it a step at a time," Larry Jones said.

Frances Jones said she spent a year and a half soliciting financial backing to make Daniel's surgery possible. Plane tickets were donated by the airlines, and other expenses will be borne by members of Houston megachurch Lakewood Church.

"How can you say no to this child when you see him?" she asked."

Yahoo!News/AP: Soldier on leave from Iraq meets his third grade penpals

"By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 12, 4:14 AM ET


SMITHTOWN, N.Y. - Third-graders at the St. Patrick School know nothing of roadside bombs or the insurgents in Iraq. They only know their pen pal, Sgt. Travis Collier, is serving there.
Collier ? home from Iraq on a two-week leave ? interrupted the students' math lesson Thursday with a surprise visit after flying all night from his home in Murrieta, Calif., to thank the children for their letters and gifts.

"We are the luckiest kids in America right now!" shrieked Katie Curry.

Gina Giamundo gushed: "I was, like, so excited! I was so happy that he came, I was about to cry. It's just a great dream come true."

Shortly after 10 a.m., teacher Elise Perri asked her 26 pupils to pay attention for a special announcement.

"I'm going to introduce to you Sgt. Travis Collier," she said to wide eyes and gasps. "He came all the way from Iraq to see you."

Collier walked in, sharply dressed in his Army uniform, ready for any drill sergeant's inspection.

"You guys get all my letters?" he asked. "Yes," they answered.

"All my soldiers in Iraq loved all the candy, all the socks, all the stuff you guys gave. It was real nice," he continued.

Then he presented the class with a red-white-and-blue banner, headlined "Operation Iraqi Freedom 2005-2006. St. Patrick School." Below it were the names of all 26 children in the class.

After meeting the third-graders, it was off to the auditorium, where Collier was cheered by the entire student body at a rally that featured the marching band and cheerleaders.

The relationship started last December. Holly Hayban wanted to correspond with a soldier in Iraq. Her mom, Bonnie, suggested the son of her business associate, Ryndi Collier.

Holly wrote to Sgt. Collier, then showed her friends his response. In the weeks and months that followed, the class sent letters and treats.

"My eyes were filled with tears and I was, like, so happy," Holly said after meeting the soldier. "I said 'hi' and I gave him a hug and stuff. It's pretty awesome."

Collier, 22, who is assigned to a bridge-building engineers unit, said he flew from Kuwait to Germany, then to Atlanta and St. Louis. Then he drove home to California, and got on a plane to New York ? at his own expense ? for the one-day visit. He goes back to Iraq on May 18.

He shrugged when asked why he wrote to each child.

"If they took time to write me, I can find at least part of my day," he said. "I mean I wouldn't have time some days, I'd be out on a mission. ... But anytime I had five minutes to myself, I'd just pull out a pen and paper and try to write a letter, put them all together and send them out."

In their letters, the children asked him about his favorite color (red) and whether he had any pets (a dog named Rufus.) They had no questions about war tactics or casualties.

"It's kind of a relief," he said. "It's basic one-on-one conversation without political views, without you know, 'This is the way I feel about the war,' none of that. It's simple fun."

Holly's mother, who helped plan the surprise, called the sergeant a hero.

"For him to individually write and continue a relationship with children when he is out on missions, and everyday his life is in jeopardy, that to me shows more than character."

ABCnews: They have a dream

"March 30, 2006 — This story begins with a happy ending, the now-prosperous lives of three children born to Mexican immigrants.

Up From Nothing: Amazing Stories of Starting at the Bottom and Rising to the Top, this Friday at 10 p.m. on "20/20"

Rogelio Garcia Jr., 25, is an engineer at a major defense contractor, with a degree from MIT. He's a steady young man with a steady girlfriend.

"I am living the American dream. I love my job. I don't have to worry about making next month's rent," Rogelio told "20/20."

His sister, Adriana, 24, drives a sports car and is in management training for a big rental car chain. Their baby brother, Angel, the only one not living at home, is now at San Jose State.

They're typical American kids with big futures. But there's one big difference: how they got there.


Trading in Cans for Cash


Yolanda and Rogelio Garcia Sr. live nothing like their children, and that is exactly how they'd dreamed it.

For 21 years, the Garcias have supported their family by picking through garbage, often cutting their fingers on broken glass while searching for cans and bottles.

Late at night they make their living on the darkened streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, recycling other people's trash for cash.

They've collected more than 8 million cans and bottles to help put two children through college. Their youngest is still hitting the books, so Yolanda and Rogelio still hit the streets every night.

"In my country, I was secretary … and here I come, and go to the containers or the trash. And I say, "Oh, my God, I do this?' But I need money," Yolanda Garcia said.


Working 365 Days a Year


More than 30 years ago Yolanda and her husband illegally crossed the border from Mexico looking for a better life.

They're citizens now and have held jobs in factories and in kitchens. They have never collected a dime of welfare or a handout when work was slow because there was always the trash.

For years, their routine would begin after midnight when they'd begin collecting cans, work they'd continue until about 3 p.m. the following day.

"And then my dad would pick up whatever my mom has been collecting and he will take it to the recycling center," said their son Rogelio.



The payout would sometimes yield as little as $40, with a good night bringing $100. But Yolanda said either way, "it's good, it's money."



The cash helps pay for school, but no luxuries. "No vacation. Nothing," said Yolanda. "And we work 365 days a year."



"It's something that … I couldn't believe my parents were doing. But I was appreciative that they were doing it. Because that meant that we got to eat and we got a roof over our head," said the couple's oldest son.



And their job came with a cultural stigma. "I know for my mom it was really difficult," said Adriana.



Yolanda said that sometimes people yell things at her. "But I don't care … because I have a dream."




Inspiring Their Children




The dream to see their children have a better life is one that perhaps their oldest son, Rogelio, did not initially appreciate .



When he was in fifth grade his solid grades earned him a spot in advanced placement classes that were more difficult, and his grades dropped.



His mom gave him a street class that forced him to picture a future without an education.



"They told me, 'you have the option — what we are doing, or something else that you love to do,'" said Rogelio.



"I just love reading about space travel, so I would say astronauts were my role models and how did they get there? Well they had their engineering degrees," he said.


So Rogelio pushed for an engineering degree and went for the best. In 2002, he earned a degree in aerospace engineering from prestigious MIT with help from scholarships.


Filmmakers James D. Scurlock and David Baum followed the family on their first trip to Boston for their son's graduation and turned their story into the documentary "Parents of the Year," which screened two years ago at the Los Angeles Film Festival. (Click here to view a clip of the documentary: www.trueworks.us/parents_of_the_year)

Dreaming of a Vacation


Now out of school, Rogelio is doing some collecting of his own.



He said he still can't throw a soda can away, and holds on to them for his family. "I don't throw them out. It's basically a sin around here. It's like throwing out money. You don't do that here," said Rogelio.



As for Cal State Riverside graduate Adriana, the image of her mother pulling on rubber gloves before dawn is in her mind as she pulls on her suit jacket each day for her management training.



"I love my job," said Adriana. "I am not washing dishes … and I am not, you know … having to wake up early in the morning to go somewhere dangerous."



The Garcias' life on the streets of Los Angeles is nearly over. The older kids now contribute financially and the youngest, Angel, is now a college sophomore. He comes home for holidays knowing that every A grade he earns brings a smile to a tired mother's face.



When he graduates, she looks forward to some rest.



"I go to my bed, and I sleep maybe one week," said Yolanda.



But until then aluminum remains the currency of the Garcia family, who moved up from nothing, one can at a time.



"They put aside what people thought of them," said son Rogelio. "They put aside the long hours … their tired bodies, because they had one goal in mind — just to get us an opportunity. And it means a lot to me."

America is a nation of immigrants. It is what makes us stronger.

ABCnews: Man survives after 14 hours in the ocean

"Jan. 26, 2006 — Tim Sears, 31, and Mike, his best friend, checked in to Carnival's "Celebration" cruise ship for five days of sun and partying in the Gulf of Mexico — an escape from another dreary winter in their home state of Michigan. They boarded the ship in Texas, looking forward to stops in Cozumel and Playa del Carmen.

After spending the day drinking beer in the sun, the two bachelors split up that night. Mike hit the casino while Sears went dancing. New friends were being made and the drinks flowing.

"Last thing I remember is looking for my friend in the casino," he said. After that, Sears' memory went blank. And that's when his vacation took a very unexpected turn.


'How Did I End Up Here?'

Unbelievably, Sears awoke in the middle of the ocean.

"I'm coming to in the middle of the water and there's no ship around and it's total, total darkness," he said. "At first it wasn't … It didn't even seem real. And then it didn't take very long to realize that it was real."

There are very few people like Sears, who go missing on a cruise ship and live to tell about it. Sears had apparently fallen off the ship — perhaps as far as 10 stories, he says — in the middle of the night.

His first thought when he regained consciousness, he said, was: "How in the hell did I get here? I mean, to be honest with you, that was my very first thought. … How in the world did I end up here in the middle of the water with no ship at all?"

Sears said he was immersed in near total darkness, seeing only a few lights way off in the distance. But he knew he had to figure a way out of his predicament.

"Fairly quickly, I realized I didn't have any pants, any shoes. All I had on was boxers and a sweatshirt and a T-shirt," he said.


Party Continues on the Ship

Back on board the ship, the party continued. No one knew Sears was missing. He was alone staring at a sea that seemed to be alive as blue-green algae called phosphorescence shimmered around him.

All through the night, for seven hours, Sears swam, worried about sharks and barracudas — all the while growing more tired and dehydrated.

The former Army paratrooper toughed it out in the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately for him, the relatively warm temperature of the waters there worked in his favor.

"Part of it, I think [was] just the will to live. Part of it, I was in the military, which I think that, that focus and drive really helped me," Sears said.

But the sun soon became his enemy, and he grew so thirsty, he started to drink the salt water. "The sun was so bright and I was so dehydrated that I would take some in my mouth and just swish it around and spit it back out. But within a half hour, I started getting ill from that," he said.

Worst of all, he kept seeing ships on the horizon, but they could not see him. His mental toughness started to give way to the reality of his dire situation.

"I knew there was no way I could continue swimming through another night because I was really cold. The water temperature was like 60, my body temperature dropped hugely," Sears said.


Almost Giving Up

After about 14 hours with no food or water, Tim had not seen a passing ship in hours. He faced a moment that most of us dread ever having to face.

"I was tired, and so I made peace with God and closed my eyes and started going down in the water, taking water into my nose, into my lungs. And no thoughts went through my head. I was ready for it to be over."

Tim says he started to sink in the darkness, but then, something happened — he felt a renewed determination and realized he wasn't ready to give up yet. "And my eyes just opened and I swam back to the top, spit the water out and decided that I was, I was going to keep swimming," he said.

Tim struggled on for three more hours — his head badly sunburned, his legs raw from hours of kicking in the salty sea. Despite all his determination, he was still 50 miles from shore.

"There was no way I was reaching land whatsoever," he said.

Then he saw something on the horizon. "I saw a ship in the distance and watched it travel on the same path for quite a while and just decided that that was … going to be my last chance," Sears said.


With everything he had left, Sears swam toward the ship, coming within 200 yards of it. "I had lost my glasses, of course, I couldn't see," he said. "And I had a bright yellow T-shirt on underneath that I had taken off and ripped to try to make it larger, to wave them down."

He thought he saw someone on the deck, but the ship kept moving. Sears screamed at the top of his lungs, until he was breathless.


It paid off. "What I later found out is that they actually heard me before they saw me," he said.


The foreign cargo ship heading for Texas — named "Eny" — plucked Sears from the water, ending his ordeal at the last possible hour.

"It actually brought me to tears when I was sitting there," he recalled. "I was asking God to send me any ship and here 'Eny' ship had rescued me and it just did, it brought me to tears."

For all Sears learned about himself trapped in the water, he still knows very little about how he got there.

Sears concedes it's possible he may have gotten way too drunk and somehow fallen overboard, though he says that in the past when he's drank too much, he's remained "aware of what's going on."

He believes that one of two things happened to him that night. "Either I was looking over the railing and fell, or somebody put something in my drink," he said.

But Sears is different from the families searching for loved ones after cruises — he'd like to know more about what happened to him, but he's very happy about what he already knows.

"I'm just glad to be alive," he said. "