In a world often dominated by challenging headlines, Yahoo News Canada aims to spotlight uplifting news stories both local and beyond. This week’s roundup includes a janitor unable to contain his emotions after high school students come together and presented him with a life changing gift, A Canadian who created a marathon to honour her brother who died by suicide and an oversize penguin capturing the hearts around the globe.
Warning: This story contains details of self-harm and suicide. If you, or anyone you know is in distress, call 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
When Tanya Joy created the Joy Run 50 in memory of her brother who died by suicide, she didn’t realize the run would help her — and others — with their own mental health struggles.
Joy said she fell in love with running when she was a small child and ever since then she has used the sport to find stability in her life.
“Running, to me, is something that I have full control over,” said Joy in an interview with CBC News.
“It’s just a space that I can go out there and be me. You can cry, or you can scream or laugh and you have the space to do it. It’s very therapeutic.”
Joy struggled with her mental health long before the loss of her brother. She grew up with a parent who battled addiction. Later in life, she survived sexual assaults and the trauma of multiple miscarriages.
Joy said, in 2007, after her first marriage ended, she spiralled into a mental health crisis.
“I remember going home and not wanting to live anymore. Everything was dark and black and I wasn’t scared,” she said. “I was more scared of living than dying, so I I overdosed on medication. Once I was OK they they put me in handcuffs and brought me to the Waterford hospital and I was in there for six days. It was awful. It was just awful.”
I want people to know that I’m so grateful that I survived.Tanya Joy
In 2021, in honour of her brother, Joy created the Joy Run 50. It’s a gruelling 50-kilometre trail run on Newfoundland’s west coast. This year, the run moved to the east coast of the island, starting at the top of Signal Hill in St. John’s. The event includes relay teams as well as solo runners.
“I want to keep his memory alive and who he was, because the stigma attached to mental health or people who die by suicide is so incorrect and false,” said Joy.
The run has since attracted runners from all over the province and beyond. Participants often share their own mental health stories as their reason for signing up.
Luis Armando Albino was 6-years-old in 1951 when he was abducted while playing at an Oakland, California, park, a report published in CNN states.
Now, more than seven decades later, Albino has been found thanks to help from an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.
READ FULL STORY: Boy abducted from California in 1951 at age 6 found alive on East Coast more than 70 years later
On February 21, 1951, a woman lured the 6-year-old Albino from the West Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother and promised the Puerto Rico-born boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy.
For more than 70 years Albino remained missing, but he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, said his 63-year-old niece Alida Alequin. His mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive.
On June 20, investigators went to her mother’s home, Alequin said, and told them both that her uncle had been found.
“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left. I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”Alida Alequin
On June 24, with the assistance of the FBI, Luis came to Oakland with members of his family and met with Alequin, her mother and other relatives. The next day Alequin drove her mother and her newfound uncle to Roger’s home in Stanislaus County, California.
“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” she said, discussing the day of the kidnapping, their military service and more.
“I was always determined to find him, and who knows, with my story out there, it could help other families going through the same thing,” Alequin said. “I would say, don’t give up.”
A Virginia high school custodian was overcome with emotion, shedding tears of joy and rolling around on the ground when a group of students surprised him with his dream car Monday after raising $20,000, according to a report published in the New York Post.
James Madison High School janitor Francis Apraku left his family behind to come to America a few years ago and told a group of students that even though he always wanted a Jeep Wrangler for his birthday, he couldn’t afford it, according to a GoFundMe set up by the boys.
The students started the fundraiser last year when they were freshmen, and a year later their efforts paid off.
“We just kind of decided we were going to try to get him his Jeep Wrangler with the GoFundMe, and we never really thought that it would come this far,” sophomore Logan Georgelas told Fox 5 DC.
“When we got $5,000 in the first day, we were like, all right, this is real.”
Video captured the heartwarming moments after the students presented Apraku with his new wheels.
Apraku was seen rolling on the sunny pavement with his arms extended above his head in the parking lot of a local restaurant where the surprise took place.
He lay on the ground in pure disbelief and bliss before he was finally helped to his feet.
“Oh my God,” he kept saying. “Oh my God.”
He said he would never forget the generosity he was shown.
“I will give thanks to Almighty God for making today for me. Today is a great day for me and I didn’t believe this would happen in my life,” said Apraku.
Do you have an uplifting moment or story you would like to share with us? Email the Yahoo Canada team: canadatips@yahoonews.com.
