Karen Cusolito grew up in New England. She says moving to California almost twenty years ago was like finally taking off a tight, constricting sweater. Karen, an artist, loved the wide-open expanses of the west.

That feeling of "bigness" eventually crept into Karen's art.

She is now famous for her 40-plus foot tall figures made out of salvaged steel. But it was her hunt for a space to create her larger-than-life figures that may be Karen's most important contribution to the Bay Area art scene.

In 2005, Karen walked into the vacant American Steel warehouse in West Oakland. The six-acre building was completely empty.

It is anything but empty now. More than160 artists are working out of American Steel Studios, creating fascinating (and sometimes flaming) works of art.

To see just what an amazing scene it is inside American Steel Studios, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Stanford University is the kind of place where the people are smart, and the names are long.

Take, for example, Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies' Rural Education Action Program. Of all the words in that name, however, one is more important than the rest.

Action.

When REAP, as it is called, was founded in 2006, the goal was to do more than just investigate the plight of poor children in rural China: they wanted to do something about. They certainly have.

In just a few years REAP's research has caught the attention, and the pursestrings, at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

To see just what REAP is doing to help millions of poor children, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

When Mike Robbins started a vegetable garden out back of the Mountain View Fire Department's Station One, he started small. Mike was worried that his bosses might not approve.

Turns out they had no problem with it; quite the opposite in fact.

Mike's garden has grown over the years, providing hundreds of pounds of fresh, healthy food for his fellow firefighters.

It as also gotten the attention of people outside the department.

To learn more about Mike's garden, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Carquinez Middle School in Crockett is depressed.

To be clear, we are not saying the students and staff there are sad. We mean the actual school building sits in a depression, roughly thirty feet below the road that runs in front of it.

That fact, as well as a row of trees along the school property means people driving by on Pomona Drive could easily miss the fact there are three hundred students going to school just a few feet away.

Except on Friday mornings, that is.

MORE: CLICK HERE TO WATCH MORE BAY AREA PROUD STORIES

Friday is when members of the Carquinez Middle School Public Service Club walk up to the road before school begins. Carrying signs of inspiration and encouragement, the students cheer and wave to drivers passing by.

Their goal is simply to get some waves and honks in return, and hopefully start people's day off on a positive note.

It is one of the many small things the club is doing that students say has changed the culture of their school.

That's just what Dave Hobson had in mind when he started it.

To see how the club started, and what they have accomplished in a very short time, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

In the world of Ironman triathlons, just crossing the finish line, doesn't make you a finisher.

There are time limits imposed on the athletes who tackle the the 2.4-mile swim, the 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run. In the case of the Kona 2012 Ironman World Championship, that time limit is 17 hours.

It's a goal Jeff Schmidt missed by just 20 minutes. He is glad he did.

MORE: For more Bay Area Proud stories 

What Jeff didn't know at the time was that his remarkable story of determination and second chances was going to get him noticed.

Jeff is now making sure that leads to something good for other challenged athletes.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

If you would like to contribute to the Challenge For Kids, go to www.ChallengedAthletes.org/GU

There's any easy way to tell the difference between a service and therapy animals: service animals help their owners, therapy animals help others.

The more than 500 animals who make up Furry Friends Pet Assisted Thereapy Services fit squarely into the second category. They make regular visits to hospitals and nursing homes; wherever the calming presence of a dog, cat, or even a rabbit, will help patients get through whatever ordeal they are facing.

Since 2009, though, Furry Friends have been showing up in an unsual spot: libraries. Their job there is to simply listen to children read.

To see what it looks like and why they do it, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

During a recent nursing shift in the Intermediate Cardiac Care Unit at Stanford Hospital, a doctor grabbed Alicia Moreci by the arm and asked excitedly, "Are you the nurse? Are you the nurse who has been drawing on the white boards?"

If she didn't know better, Alicia might have thought she was about to get yelled at for doing something unprofessional. Instead she was complimented and thanked.

Such interactions are increasing common for Alicia, ever since she began creating weekly doodles on the white board across from her unit's nursing station.

She dry-erase-marked her first drawing, a Loch Ness Monster, last July. Since then she has completed fifty doodles, each one it seems, brightening the days of her coworkers and patients.

To see her drawings, and hear her story, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

 When Kemba Shakur moved to Oakland in the mid 1990's she joked that some state prisons had better landscaping than her block. Kemba would know. She worked for years as a guard at the prison in Soledad.

Kemba's walked away from that experience feeling that more needed to be done to help young men before they ended up in prison. The bleak landscape of her new home gave her an idea how to do it.

Trees.

Planting trees would not only beautify the city, Kemba determined, but also provide work and volunteer opportunities for the young men of Oakland. She was right.

To see what Kemba, and her Urban Releaf organization, have accomplished, watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

The morning after Kenna Reeder's mother, Robin, died of breast cancer, the 7-year-old walked into the family kitchen holding a jar. She sat down and started pulling money out and counting it. 

Her father, Jordan, asked her what she was doing. Kenna said, "Getting ready for Relay."

She was talking about Relay For Life, the American Cancer Society's annual, overnight, fundraising walk.

The Reeder family, including Robin, fielded a team for the 2012 Relay, but this year Kenna decided to lead her own.

With the help of her younger sister, Ava, and more than two dozen friends Team Reeder Kids leads all 82 teams in terms of fundraising, having brought more than $16,000 so far.

You can watch Kenna's story above.

You can find out more about Relay For Life here. To find out about Teem Reeder Kids, click here.

Once they are done building robots at Apollo High School, they'll have to get busy building something else: a trophy case.

There are just 8 teachers and 160 students at Apollo, a continuation school in the East Side Union High School District. It is a last chance at graduating high school for students who weren't making it at the district's traditional high schools. If they were even going to school at all, that is.

It is that troubled background that all Apollo students share, which makes the accomplishments of one group so remarkable.

Apollo's first-ever robotics team, lead by first-year teacher Michaela Brant, is barely six months old. Still, they have brought home trophies from their first two robotic competitions.

Now, they just need a place to put them.

To see them in action, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

In Silicon Valley there are many people who still remember, all too well, when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.

There are few, however, who remember it as fondly as one group of South Bay environmentalists. What makes them smile are not the lost jobs or devastated portfolios, but rather a window of opportunity the crash created.

In the 1990's the City of Santa Clara's municipal golf course, Fairway Glen, closed for good. Developers had their eye on a 40-acre section of that land along the Guadalupe River to build housing for Silicon Valley's exploding workforce. When the economy crashed, so did that need.

The group, including long-time Santa Clara Unified science teacher Dennis Dowling, then swooped in and convinced the city to the set aside the land as the Ulistac Natural Area.

For the past twelve years they have spent thousands of hours trying to restore native California plants to the area, and weeding out the invaders. They are, in essence, trying to make a part of California look like California once again.

To see their progress, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

If you'd like to visit Ulistac in person, they are celebrating their annual Wildflower Day this Saturday, April 6th. You can find more information about the natural area, including the address here.

There are many people happy that Good Karma Bikes has moved into the old industrial building at 345 Sunol Street in San Jose.

The buildings owner is happy. The cavernous, warehouse-like structure is actually scheduled to be demolished in a few years to make way for a housing complex. Finding a tenant to live with that understanding can't be easy.

Jim Gardner is certainly happy. The founder of Good Karma Bikes began fixing the bicylces of homeless people for free a few years ago in San Jose's St. James Park. Back then, he worked with a set of tools he kept in the trunk of his car. With his new, 8,000 square foot space, he could not only fit more than one hundred cars, but he can help many more people.

The clients of Good Karma Bikes are happy. They are mostly homeless and low-income people for whom a bicycle is their main form of transportation. They use it to find work, get groceries, and go to the doctor. They can't afford to pay a bike shop to fix something when it breaks. The mechanics at Good Karma, though, will not only fix it for free, but teach the bikes owners how to do it for themselves.

Perhaps happiest of all, Gardner says, is his wife. After years of housing all his mechanic tools and equipment at their home, she has her backyard back.

To see our story about Good Karma Bikes new home, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

The women who run Princess Project Silicon Valley have a saying about the prom experience, one gained from personal experience: "You may not remember the date, but you always remember the dress."

Kristi Saso remembers every seam on hers.

Saso, one of PPSV's co-chairs, may cringe a little when she thinks of what was considered fashionable when she was in high school, but remembers what it was like to feel so glamorous and beautiful.

Ever since 2006, Saso and a close group of friends have been making that feeling possible for thousands of South Bay girls.

This year, PPSV will give away more than 1,000 new and used prom dresses to girls who might not otherwise be able to afford one.

To see what one of their give-away days looks like, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Lisa Blanchard would like to thank the woman who changed her life.

If only she knew who she was.

As Lisa tells the story, three years ago at a women's retreat she struck up a conversation with a woman she didn't know. The question came up: If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?

The woman's answer was she would help provide clothing for sexual assault victims who have had to surrender theirs as part of evidence collection. The woman had heard that due to a lack of resources for the state's sexual assault response teams, or SART, victims were sometimes sent home wearing nothing but a paper hospital gown.

Lisa said she'd love to work on such a project with the woman, but when she tried to follow up, she couldn't locate her.

Lisa says it turns out the woman wasn't on the roster of attendees. What's more, no one else at the conference knew who she was or even saw Lisa talking to her.

Lisa suspects that woman might have been an angel. Which is fitting, because that is what some people might call Lisa.

To see what Lisa has done since that conversation, watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

Paul B. Newman says his memory of the accident is like a film strip, with large sections cut out.

In February of 2003, Paul was driving on Highway 85 with son, Mitch, who was 11 at the time. A car, traveling roughly 100 miles per hour and weaving in and out of traffic, sideswiped Paul's truck.

Paul only remembers fragments of what happened next: Hitting the guard rail, flipping over, grabbing Mitch and yelling, "Hold on, Buddy!"

To this day, Paul and Mitch disagree about how many times the truck rolled over. For the sake of ending the argument, they have settled on the number four.

While both were banged up pretty well, they managed to avoid any serious, life-threatening injuries. Paul and Mitch were well enough, in fact, that just a couple of weeks after the accident they went to meet the two paramedics who treated them at the scene.

They brought with them a Starbucks gift card as a way to say thanks. Paul also asked them a question: How could he help repay them for their help?

The answer to that question has ended up helping thousands of people over the past decade.

To see how, watch Garvin Thomas' story above. 

Nikhil Buduma got three biology textbooks for his birthday and he couldn't be happier.

Unlike many other 18-year-olds, Nikhil doesn't get his thrills from playing video games or watching television. He says it's making new discoveries and solving old problems in science that keep him entertained. It also keeps the Bellarmine College Preparatory senior very busy these days.

Nikhil recently captained his school's team to the national finals of the Department of Energy's Science Bowl. In another competition, the Biology Olympiad, Nikhil scored the highest results in the country, beating out more than 7,000 other participants. He's also qualified for a national chemistry competition, as well as the state debate championship.

And then there's that little side project he's been working on, to improve the pertussis vaccine for infants.

Watch Garvin Thomas' profile of Nikhil above.

There was a reason Chuck Hammers opened his very first pizza restaurant in San Jose: it was the only place that would have him.

The year was 1986 and Chuck had recently graduated UC Berkeley. He says they only downtown where the rents were low enough for a 25-year-old with no restaurant experience to open a shop was San Jose.

Hammers grew that first restaurant into what is now a 20-outlet Pizza My Heart restaurant chain. 

Because of the opportunity San Jose had given him, Hammers had always wanted to give something back to the city.

In 2008, with city revenues plummeting and services being slashed, Hammers saw his opportunity. He, and other downtown property owners offered up a plan to help the keep the downtown streets clean, without costing the city any more money.

It was the birth of the Groundwerx program.

To pay for the plan, the property owners voted to tax themselves. They've been so happy with the results, they just voted to do it again.

To see just what Groundwerx does, and why the city calls it a success, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

It wasn't long after arriving in Ashland to take a new job, that Hilary Bass realized she had her work cut out for her. It was 2004 and the then-24-year-old was hired to be the residential services coordinator for the Eden House apartment complex.

She got to work organizing a youth group.

The Youth Leadership Council, as they were called, held dances and poetry slams, listened to guest speakers, and worked on their homework. But when children from other housing developments started coming over and joining in, Hilary wondered why they didn't take advantage of the programs where the lived.

Because, she soon found out, they didn't exist.

It was clear to her and the young people there wasn't enough for kids to do in Ashland.

So they decided to do something about it.

To see what they did, watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

You could say they were the seven weeks that changed Cathryn Couch's life, except she did need all seven of them. By the third week, everything had changed.

Cathryn's transformation began when a friend asked a favor: Could Cathryn, a professional chef, teach the friend's daughter how to cook?

Cathryn agreed to spend one afternoon a week, for seven weeks, cooking with the teenager then giving the food away to people who needed it. At first they considered giving it to a homeless shelter, but later settled on delivering it to the families of people diagnosed with cancer.

After just a few weeks of witnessing the growth in the girl, and the gratitude of the families, Cathryn decided this was something more teenagers should experience.

She founded the Ceres Community Project in 2007. Relying on her skills as a chef and nutritionist, as well as an MBA with years in the non-profit field, Cathryn has grown Ceres by leaps and bounds.

To see what it looks like today, watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

For someone whose goal it is to help other succeed, Bruce Wilson began with just the opposite.

Wilson, a 24-year-old UC Berkeley graduate set out two years ago to help encourage young, "social" entrepreneurs: people with ideas for businesses that would be both financially sustainable, and socially beneficial.

To do so, Wilson formed the Relay Foundation. 

The original plan was to run competitions where young people would submit their business plans and compete for grants to get their operations up and running.

The Relay Foundation's first, big competition, however, got a very small response. Just one business plan was submitted.

Bruce headed back to the drawing board and came up with a new focus for the Relay Foundation.

One, he says, is just what the budding social entrepreneur of tomorrow needs to succeed.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Different ships, carrying different cargos, going different places, in all kinds of weather conditions.

When you work on a tugboat on San Francisco Bay, no two jobs are every exactly alike. It's what keeps the job fun says Perry Overton, captain of the Guard, a man with decades of experience working on the water. 

Even his skills were tested, though, the morning of October 31, 2011. Having passed under the Golden Gate Bridge on his way to escort a container ship back into the Bay, Overton spotted a dark shape floating in the water roughly 100 yards off the tugboat's stern.

Overton didn't think too much of it at first. From logs, to seals, to crab buoys, there are always things floating in the water out there. The Guard kept its course and stayed on schedule. But when the container ship radioed it was running late, Overton decided to double back and check out what was in the water.

It was a man. He was alive and treading water a mile and a half out to see with the receding tide dragging him further each second. He was apparently so hypothermic he didn't react in any way when the tug pulled up near him and hailed him over a loudspeaker. The crew was going to have to act quickly to save his life.

Good thing they had practiced.

To hear the rest of the details, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Marcy Schaaf knows what you may be thinking and, no, it isn't true.

She is not a "crazy bunny lady."

She is simply someone with a business mind, a non-profit heart, and a significant stubborn streak.

The business mind came from years working as a high-level advertising and marketing executive. So high-level, in fact, Marcy ran into issues of burn-out and chose to step out of the rat race more than a decade ago.

It was during that period that she offered to provide a foster home for a rabbit. She quickly fell in love, not just with that rabbit, but the whole species. Marcy became impressed with their intelligence, their independence, and their sense of adventure.

She also became disillusioned by how many rabbits were ending up in shelters and how many ended up being euthanized.

That's when the stubborn streak kicked in. Marcy made it her mission to save as many of them as she could, and SaveABunny was born.

In the fifteen years since the all-volunteer group was started, Marcy says they have been able to save some 5,000 rabbits from being euthanized at Bay Area shelters.

The ASPCA is so impressed, they recently gave SaveABunny a $25,000 grant to expand their operation.

Marcy says she needs the money, because the rabbits need to be saved.

To see just how Marcy goes about saving so many animals, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

To learn more about SaveABunny, visit their website.

Neil Armstrong, Walter Cronkite, and William Shatner.

Three men, each with a unique connection to space exploration. Three men who also play a role in Mark Showalter's tale of discovery.

Showalter is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. Like many of his generation (he's in his 50's), Showalter was inspired by watching Armstrong walk on the moon to make space and science a part of his future plans.

It was while in college, Showalter says, that one night he saw Cronkite on the evening news tell of the discovery of Jupiter's jovian ring. The grainy image of squiggly lines intrigued Showalter. Just a few years later he would use the same data of NASA's Voyager mission that created that image, to make his first major discovery: Jupiter's gossamer rings.

His discovery's continued over the years: Saturn's moon, Pan; two rings and two moons around Uranus, and lastly, two moons orbiting Pluto.

A tweet from Shatner - the original Captain Kirk - contributed to the effort.

To see how, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Oh, if these waffles could talk.

Bobbi's Coffee Shop opened up in Cupertino in 1969. That was back in the day when the South Bay grew the fruit that fed the country, long before it developed the technology that changed the world.

A lot has changed in Cupertino since then.

One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the loyalty people have shown to Bobbi's. Be it an apricot farmer or software engineer, people have been filling up the booths, the stools, and the tables at the old-school diner, feasting on bacon, eggs, and burgers for decades.

But that was all about to come to an end last year. The current owner had lost her lease and the Cupertino institution was closed.

It would have stayed that way were it not for a special woman - Janet Dancer - with a special connection to her favorite restaurant.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

George Maher was in a rush to become an Eagle Scout.

The year was 1944 and George was a sixteen-year-old who had signed up to join the Navy to fight in World War II. Still, George wanted to get that Eagle Scout badge before he shipped out.

He had completed all the necessary work, gotten all the necessary merit badges to qualify. All that was left was his board of review hearing.

The hearing was scheduled for March 10, 1944. It started, but it never ended. George's mother burst into the room to tell him his father was gravely ill and they had to get to the hospital immediately. He left without saying a word.

George went on to serve his country, get married, raise a family, even volunteer for the Boy Scouts.Those who know him say he always acted like an Eagle Scout. But George knew he wasn't.

It wasn't until he told his story to Mark Manchester of the Pacific Skyline Council, that the wheels started in motion to recognize George for what he accomplished so long ago.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Sherry Higgs is new to the transportation business. Sadly, she's not new to the cancer business.

In 2010 Sherry was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a very rare, extremely aggressive form of the disease. She told her oncologist she wanted to be aggressive in return. You name a type of cancer treatment, Sherry had it.

Getting to all those treatments, though, posed a challenge even to someone with an "above average" support system like Sherry. She decided if she beat the disease, providing rides is something she could do to help others.

Well, she did. And she is.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Last March, a group of Oakland 6th graders discovered sunken treasure.

The kids found a 10-pound bag of gold and silver jewelery and antiques at the bottom of Lake Merritt.

The story made national news.

Eventually, a man claiming to the be the rightful owner of the property was found, but what was often lost in the story was the reason the children were at the lake in the first place.

They weren't looking for treasure, they were looking for trash.

The students, from nearby St. Paul School, were regular volunteers for the Lake Merritt Institute. Dr. Richard Bailey started the institute in the 1990's and helping to clean up Lake Merritt has been his profession, and his passion, ever since.

There are many longtime Oakland residents who say the lake has never looked (and smelled) better, and they say, Bailey deserves a lot of credit for that.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Bob Worthington is 78-years-old and carries a cane. Which, it should be noted, is different than walking walking with a cane.

Bob, you see, doesn't use the cane as an aid to mobility. It's an aid to self defense. He is a teacher of the, relatively new, martial art of cane do.

Bob teaches weekly classes in cane do to other East Bay seniors. The concept is simple: use something many seniors already have, a cane, to give them something many are lacking, a sense of security.

Bob, and other cane do instructors, say they have seen the practice change the lives of many seniors. People who were afraid to walk the streets of their neighborhoods now have the confidence to do so.

Bob says the confidence and freedom he sees older people get from cane do, has inspired him to train as many people as he can.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Claire Britton-Warren didn't know she had California roots.

Over the years, Claire had done quite a bit of genealogical research into her family tree, yet had never known that more than one hundred and fifty years ago, her great-great-great-grandfather had moved to California from New York.

One reason that may have escaped her notice is that he lived in San Francisco for just three weeks. He died when the boiler aboard the steamship, Jenny Lind, exploded on April 11, 1853.

Both of those facts were revealed to Claire in an unexpected phone call from a historian in New York, one who had stumbled across John Bradbury's story and decided to share it with his ancestor.

The news got Claire, an amateur historian herself, wondering about the Jenny Lind. She spend the next three years researching the disaster, correcting mistakes in the history, and uncovering the big role the disaster may have had in California history.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Karen Adamski says she is always looking for projects to give her father, Ron Casella, to keep him busy in his garage workshop. He had already built the dozens of birdhouses that hang from a tree in the front yard of Karen's San Jose home.

It is why when Karen heard about the Little Free Library trend, she knew just the person to build hers.

Slightly bigger than a birdhouse, Karen's library sits atop her fence and gets a steady stream of business.

A Little Free Library is a library with no due dates, no late fees, and no closing hours. It is place where people are free to take a book. All that is asked is they leave one in exchange.

People around the world have become fans of the concept and according to an orginizing website, www.littlefreelibrary.org, there are now more than 6,000 of the around the world, including dozens around the Bay Area.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Alex Cherian holds in his hands a silver can containing a reel of 16mm film, approximately 20 minutes in length. The label on the front of the can says "We'll Do It Ourselves."

"We'll do what ourselves?" asks Cherian, archivist for the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive. "We'll do political reform ourselves? We'll knock down a building ourselves? I literally have no idea until I open this up and have a look."

Such is the dilemma Cherian faces on and almost-daily basis. The archive, housed at San Francisco State University, contains roughly 4,000 hours of news film from Bay Area television stations from the 1950's through the 1970's. Much of it has not been put through a projecter since it was first aired, half a century ago.

As news gathering technology changed over the years and film was replaced, first by video tape, then digital recording media, the reels upon reels of film were at first, unused, and later unwanted. Much of it was thrown away.

What did survive came to the archive with little, or no, paperwork attached to it. The labels on the cans, if there are any, are often generic or flat out wrong.

So, it's Cherian's job to slowly sift through the material, choose what he believes to be most likely to contain footage of historic importance, then start the laborious job  of cleaning and digitizing the material.

To see just some of what he has uncovered, and how much more is left to sift through, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

The explore the archive youself, go to: http://www.library.sfsu.edu/about/collections/sfbatv/index.php

Vinnie Cilurzo says the first batch of home-brewed beer he ever made tasted horrible. Still, he enjoyed the process so much he figured it was something he could make a living out of.

That he has done, and then some.

Vinnie and his wife, Natalie, took over the Russian River Brewing Company brand a decade ago. Over that time one of their beers, Pliny the Elder, has achieved cult status in the beer world: racking up awards, and flying off store shelves.

Vinnie and Natalie say their goal was just to make a good product, not set the beer world on fire. Which makes it even more surprising that they did it again.

Watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

Editor's note: In the video report above we incorrectly referred to the American Homebrewers Association as the Homebrewers Association of America. We apologize for the error.

It was raining during lunchtime at Los Altos High School. A group of five students had taken refuge in a corner of teacher Robert Freeman's classroom to eat their lunches.

Robert says he tried not to eavesdrop, but couldn't help hearing the students complain about school, the economy, their prospects for college ... pretty much everything. He said to them, "You should hear yourselves. You sound so cynical."

"But the world is pretty messed up," the students responded.

"You're right," Robert told them, "so what are you going to do about it?"

That conversation happened in 2006. Since then Robert, those students, and thousands more like them have done quite a bit about "it". They started a non-profit called One Dollar For Life.

Asking for just a single dollar from other students, they have managed to build fourteen schools for children in the developing world.

And, Robert believes, that is just the beginning.

Watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Al Capri pays just 50 cents for his therapy sessions.

The cheap price, though, isn't the only thing unsual about Al's therapy, there's the location as well: the Carrows restaurant on Center Avenue in Martinez.

Al's therapist, you may have guessed, is not a doctor. It's not even human. It's the the claw machine located between the restaurant's pie display case and the restrooms.

This all goes back, Al says, to when his wife, Marti, died 10 years ago. Al admits he was at loose ends. Tired of cooking (too much food) for himself at home, Al started go out to eat dinner most nights. That's when he stumbled across the claw machine.

He says the challenge and, yes, strategy of the game has help to keep his mind busy this past decade. It's why he continues to put in roughly $20 a week to play.

Al's addiction to the game, though, has not been good just for him.

To see who else is benefitting, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Brian Simuro is not ashamed to admit he was guilted into action by a little girl.

Brian is a San Jose police officer. He says one morning, seven years ago, a young girl visited his station during roll call. Brian says she was battling leukemia and had come to ask the officers if they could donate some money to help in the fight against cancer.

Brian, it turns out, knew more than a little about what that girl was going through.

As a fifteen-year-old he, too, was diagnosed with leukemia. He was fortunate enough to have beaten the disease and gone on to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

Still, if this little girl was brave enough to walk up to a bunch of cops and ask for money, why wasn't he doing anything?

He's not asking that question anymore.

Not long after that girl's visit, Brian started the Cops Care Cancer Foundation. Their big event every year is called Fantasy Flight. A day, Brian says, when sick kids and their families can take a vacation for their disease.

This year's Fantasy Flight hosted thirty-six kids and their families.

To see how it went, watch Garvin Thomas' report above.

More than 17 hours after the starter's pistol had fired, and a half hour after the finish line had officially closed, Jeff Schmidt of San Jose emerged from the darkness and approached the end of the Kona 2012 Ironman World Championships.

Jeff was, by far, the last competitor to finish the race.

Race officials had told him hours earlier he wouldn't get to the finish line before it closed, but Jeff ignored their warnings and kept running. He says he had come too far, not just in this race, but in life to quit now.

Watch Jeff's amazing journey, above.

 Red and Dorothy Carson's love was a forbidden one. Not for any religious or cultural reasons, rather for military ones. When the two met, both serving in a station hospital in Iceland during World War II, she was an officer, he was not.

It wasn't enough to keep the San Jose couple apart. In fact, they spent the rest of their lives together, married 64 years until Dorothy's death in 2010. After her death, Red admits he was in a fog. That is, until one night he woke from a deep sleep with a vision for how to honor her life: with a scholarship at San Jose State University to the nursing program.

Watch how he did it in Garvin Thomas' story above.

When Wyeth Coulter was eight-years-old, he wanted to build some homes. Not with building blocks, mind you, but real homes. For real people.

You see, age eight is when Wyeth looked around his home city of San Francisco and realized there were many people not as fortunate as him: people hungry and living on the streets.

That's when he told his parents he'd like to build some homes for them. As you can imagine, it was explained to Wyeth that residential construction wasn't a reasonable option. Still, he didn't give up. Wyeth decided, instead, to focus on something he knew a little more about: pumpkins.

Now, Wyeth didn't actually know anything about growing pumpkins, but he had long been a fan of Halloween and pumpkin patches with their hay rides and corn mazes. Even so, he asked his parents if he could grow some pumpkins on land the family owned in Sonoma County. They agreed.

That first year Wyeth grew and sold $100 worth of pumpkins and gave the money to charity.

That was eight years ago. Wyeth has since learned a lot about raising pumpkins. We could all learn about lot about life from Wyeth.

Watch Wyeth's story, above.

If you'd like to but some of his pumpkins you can visit Wyeth's pumpkin patch from noon to 4 p.m. on Oct. 19, 20, 21, and 27 at 150 Spruce Street in San Francisco.

With the exception of family and close, personal friends, Michael McGovern rarely shared his survivor story.

As a two-year-old, living in Connecticut, Michael was diagnosed with a rare, serious form of cancer. He says most of the other children in his hospital ward with a similar condition did not survive. Michael, however, was fortunate.

He grew up, moved to the Bay Area, and eventually joined the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.

Michael says to be a member of the group is to be a part of something special. Still, Michael's past was not something he shared with the other singers.

That is, until this past year, when the chorus announced it had formed a partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Michael (reluctantly, at first) came forward.

Michael says Make-A-Wish played a special role during that difficult time in his childhood. The opportunity to give back to those who helped him is something, Michael says, worth singing about.

Watch NBC Bay Area Garvin Thomas' report above.

 Angel Gonzalez-Prado's mother always told her daughter she could do whatever she wanted to do, be whatever she wanted to be. Sure, the fact she was in a wheelchair due to the effects of spina bifida, was going to make things more difficult. It didn't, however, makes those things impossible.

Over the years the Redwood City teeneager and Sequoia High School sophmore has, on more than one occasion, proven her mother right.

She did it again this summer when Angel tried out for, and made, her school's junior varsity cheerleading squad.

This past weekend Angel performed for the first time in front of a packed stadium during homecoming weekend.

Watch her story above.

Jonathan Rigby never saw things more clearly than the day his doctor told him his eyesight was deteriorating.

Jonathan had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 18, but had not made controlling his disease a priority. His doctors words changed that.

Training for triathlons became the central part of a new, healthy lifestyle for the 45-year-old CEO of a development stage pharmaceutical company.

Eleven Ironmans later, Jonathan has proven to himself, as well as anyone else, that a diabetic life is not a diminished one.

Now that he's made himself healthy through triathlons, it's time help others do the same.

Watch how Jonathan is helping others, above.

If you would like to support Jonathan's efforts to help children like Kylie you can learn more at  http://www.triforkids.org/ .

Toan Lam of San Francisco will tell you that reaching your goal in life isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Lam had always dreamed of being a big-market television reporter and by time he was 30, he had reached it, reporting for a Bay Area television station.

Still, Lam found that the job , while feeding his bank account, wasn't satisfying his soul. A near-daily dose of reporting on death and destruction left him empty inside. So Lam made a switch. He left the television career behind, and started a non-profit, Go Inspire Go.

Lam now uses the video journalist skills he honed after years of working in TV news, to tell a very different type of story.

Watch his story above.

Bob Schiro's Halloween displays have come a long way since his first one at age 10.

He says that year's haunted house consisted mostly of sheets draped from the rafters of his family's garage. Bob charged friends ten cents to tour it. He made 20 cents.

Over the past decade his displays have become increasingly elaborate. Last year's pirate ship was 50-feet long. This year's haunted house in San Jose's Cambrian neighborhood is three stories high.

Schiro expects more than three thousand people to visit his home on Halloween.

To see what they are in for, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

Halloween is Judi Townsend's Christmas.

Just like costume stores and pumpkin patches, October, it turns out, is the best month of the year for someone who sells, rents, and repairs mannequins. Still, becoming the owner and driving force behind Oakland's Mannequin Madness was something Judi never planned. In fact, it is something she never could have imagined.

Judi's story shows us how following one's passions can end up leading to some very unlikely, and surprisingly profitable places.

Watch Judi's story above.

Michael Hamilton, you could say, comes from a medical family. Every member of his immediate family has had, or is planning on a career in medicine (that's two doctors, two nurses, and a prospective medical student).

Michael, however, chose a legal career - he's an attorney at a pharmaceutical company. And while his expertise is in the field of health care, he doesn't have direct contact with patients. Until he plays guitar for them on the weekends at the University of California at San Francisco.

To see how Michale is helping patients feel better, watch Garvin Thomas' story above.

If you would like to volunteer for the Music Is Good Medicine Program, please contact:
Pegi Walker, Staff Chaplain/Music Is Good Medicine Program Coordinator
(415)353-1941 or Pegi.Walker@ucsfmedctr.org

 Helen Garza and Rita Chavez Medina have probably forgotten more about how to run an election than most of us will ever know.

The two South Bay women have been poll workers for Santa Clara County for more than half a century. Rita's first election was in 1952, Helen's was in 1960.

Both women say it is a desire to help others, imparted by their mothers, that keeps them coming back election after election.

Watch their story, above.