17-year-old Mariella has dual (双) citizenship between the U.S. and the U.K.

At the start of COVID-19, she happened to be in New York, and couldn’t leave due to travel restrictions.Getting up at dawn to go to online school back in England meant she had abundant time for her own use in the afternoons, then she began learning American Sign Language (ASL).The teen thought seeing an ASL interpreter in action might help her learnfaster，but when she looked up movies and TV shows on streaming platforms, she discovered they didn’t use ASL interpreters.Mariella decided then and there to change that fact!

Seeking help from ASL teachers and the deaf community, she created Sign Up, an app that uses a simple Google Chrome extension.It adds an ASL interpreter to the corner of movies so people who are deaf can watch both at the same time.

The teen decided to focus her efforts first on the Disney + platform because that’s what she believes children watch the most. “My sister and I were its crazy movie watchers when we were younger, and I couldn’t imagine that not being a part of our childhood,” Mariella said.

With over 1,000 users in less than two weeks, the response has been nothing short of that. “I didn’t think it would take off so much,” Mariella said. “I thought maybe a couple dozen people would use it, but I’ve had 20, 000 hits on my website and just so many shares and likes. It’s just blown up in ways I didn’t think it would.”

To cover her development and hiring costs, she has started a GoFundMe campaign, which has raised nearly  $1 ,000 of its  $10,000 goal. Mariella plans to expand the app to include as many of the international sign languages as possible. “My hope is that we’ ll have a lot more movies interpreted-it’ll be on every platform,” she said.

Lucy Flores teaches preschool students how to read letters and write their names. After school, Flores goes home and does the same for her dad. Flores’ father, Luciano Flores, stopped attending school after first grade.

She said she tried to teach her dad to read and write when she was younger, but it didn’t go well. She doubled down on her own education and became the first person in her family, on both parents’ sides, to graduate from college.

With her teaching background, Lucy Flores gave it——teaching her dad——another shot. And this time she said he was “excited” to learn. After four months of working together for two hours, three days a week after they are both done with work, Lucy Flores said, “My dad can now write his own name and is reading some books on his own.”

As she has taught her dad, Lucy Flores has shared their journey on social media, where nearly 100,000 followers are tracking their progress. “I don’t know to this day if he understands how many people are watching him and following him.” said Lucy Flores. “But I took it as an opportunity that would encourage him even more. I know that it has.” Followers on social media share lesson plan ideas and have sent school supplies and books to the family, according to Lucy Flores.

In addition to watching her dad’s progress and inspiring others to never give up on their dreams, Lucy Flores said the most pleasant part of teaching her dad was the change in their own father-daughter relationship. “In reality, he and I did not get along well,” said Lucy Flores,who described her dad as being quiet and not one to share his feelings or sit down and play with her as a kid.

Luciano Flores said that he was excited to continue to focus on learning letters and numbers and to spend time with his family.

Curtis Whitson knew the water fall was coming. He'd rafted down the Arroyo Seco, a river in central California, before. But this year was different. Heavy snow and spring rains had turned the usually manageable falls into something fierce. And this year, instead of his friends, Whitson's companions were his wife, Krystal Ramirez, and his 13-year-old son, Hunter. As the three of them approached the falls late in the afternoon of the third day of their camping trip, Whitson could tell from the increasing roar of water in the narrow canyon that they were in serious trouble. There was no way they’d be able to rappel down(绕绳下降) the rocks as planned.

“The water was just gushing through there with tremendous force,” recalls Whitson.

They could wade to the shore, but would anyone find them there? They had no mobile phone service, and they hadn’t seen a single person in the past three days.

As he considered what to do, Whitson hit on a bit of luck-he heard voices coming from the other side of the falls. He yelled, but the sound of the rushing water drowned him out.

We have to get these people a message, Whitson thought.

Then he spotted his green Nalgene water bottle. Whitson grabbed it and carved “Help!” on it. Ramirez also reminded him that he had a pen and paper, which she'd brought to play games with, in his backpack. Whitson knew it was a long shot. But he scrawled “We are stuck here at the waterfall. Get help please!” and pushed the note into the bottle, throwing it over the waterfall perfectly.                                          

“All right, that’s all we can do,” Whitson told Hunter.

It took 30 minutes to navigate back upstream to the beach where they made a fire. With no reasonable expectation that their message in a bottle would find its way to anyone, they spelled out SOS in white rocks. As the evening wore on, they placed a headlamp with a flashing light on a ledge (岩石突出部) . Then, just after midnight, they heard a helicopter hovering above them. Whitson ran over to the headlamp and started flashing it at the helicopter. He, Ramirez, and Hunter were waving and hollering when they heard the magic words: “This is Search and Rescue. You have been found.”

It was a moment of pure happiness as the three chatted with the officers who had rescued them. Together, they marveled at the unlikelihood of it all. Two men had seen the water bottle in the water. When they picked it up, they noticed the writing on it - “Help!”.

A few days after news of the rescue broke, one of the hikers contacted Whitson.

That’s when he learned the story. There were actually two little girls hiking with the men that day. It was the girls who first spotted the bottle and swam to get it. Whitson is planning on having a big barbecue to meet the hikers-and thank them.