Real Life/Heartwarming/Acts of Kindness

Who said that the most beautiful moments only happen in fiction? This page will probably make you cry tears of joy.

No personal ones or natter, please.

"Dick: "He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.""
 * 9/11/01, we saw the worst and the best. Most people who were involved who weren't terrorists helped out a whole bunch, and it brought a country together.
 * This story (site NSFW). A 16-year-old Chinese boy, despondent over problems in his life (including parents divorcing and an older sister falling ill), went to a train station and tried to commit suicide by jumping off the platform. A 19-year-old girl managed to talk her way through the crowd by claiming to be his girlfriend, then attempted to talk him down, but he said she couldn't save him. So she grabbed him and kissed him, giving rescue workers time to pull him to safety. When asked why she did it, the girl explained that she'd been through the same kind of thing herself and wanted him to know how foolish suicide is.
 * Actor Colin Farrell was once in Toronto shooting a movie when a local radio station held a competition with a prize of $2,000 for anyone who could bring Farrell to the studio. Farrell heard about the competition, and found a homeless guy on the street and brought him into the studio to claim the prize. A few years later, Farrell was in Toronto again and found that the homeless guy (known as "Stress") was still on drugs and on the streets; he took him shopping, bought him over $2,000 worth of clothes and household goods, gave him $830 to cover first and last months' rent on an apartment, and gave him a heartfelt talk about addiction counselling. A year later, Stress is still sober and still off the streets.
 * Another heartwarming moment involving Farrell: When the song "Falling Slowly" won the 2008 Oscar for Best Original Song, only Glen Hansard was able to give an acceptance speech. After the commercial break, Colin, who had lobbied hard behind the scenes to give co-writer Marketa Irglova a chance to revel in her moment of glory, accompanied Marketa as she went back on stage to give her acceptance speech.
 * Nearing the end of The Lord of the Rings filming, the stuntwoman who played Arwen during the chase scene really loved the horse she had rode, but unfortunately, did not have the money to buy him and someone else wanted the horse as well. Viggo Mortensen (who plays Aragorn) heard about this and told her he'll see if he could get it. When he did buy the horse and gave it to her, she asked him how much, so she could pay him back. But he gently refused and replied that he simply wanted to give him to her, knowing how much she loved the horse.
 * It wasn't the only crowning moment for Mr Mortensen, either. The story goes that during one of the fights, he missed a strike and cracked another stuntwoman a good one across the head, splitting her helm and doing her an injury. She wound up in hospital as a result. Viggo, in full Aragorn costume no less, showed up the next day at the hospital carrying an armload of beautiful flowers for her. Awwwwwww.
 * A dying 10-year-old girl's last wish was to see the movie Up, but the hospice didn't send a wheelchair before she became too sick to get out of bed. A family friend managed to contact Pixar and got an employee to fly out with a DVD of the movie, a bag of stuffed toys of the characters and a movie poster. How? Pixar's got an automated telephone answering system; you need to know the name of a specific person to get through. The relative found the phone number then guessed a name to get connected, and Pixar employees agreed to send someone over the next day. The mother told her that Up would be coming to her room soon, and the girl said she felt bad, but would hang on. The girl couldn't exactly see the film as she was in so much pain that her eyes were closed, so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the events. Nearly seven hours after watching the film, the girl died.
 * Just to further emphasise this - Up wasn't out on DVD yet when this happened. It was barely out in cinemas. They specially put the DVD together, which took some effort, just to show it to this one girl.
 * And Pixar never made this into a publicity stunt, either; they've refused to comment. So this is because an employee wanted to give her that last wish.
 * I'm unsure if this has been mentioned before, but there was this one time when the band Cold Play came to Mexico, and went to one of the poorest communities out there, and with THEIR OWN HANDS helped for a while. They then provided money and other aid to them. Apparently, they came back some time later. Just out of the blue, they decided to help. We need more artists like that.
 * This image. Wonder Woman and The Flash in this picture aren't posing with the little boy; he got lost, and they helped him find his father. Rescued by real-life superheroes.
 * Likewise, this story of a fireman who dressed up as Spider-Man to coax an autistic boy from a window ledge.
 * Chen Shangyi and Wang, an eighty year old Chinese couple who have picked up and cared for over 40 disabled orphans from the streets.
 * A group of gamers made a list of every move you need to make in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time so that a blind person they didn't even know could play through it completely.
 * In Team Fortress 2 during the Engineer Update, every time someone crafted an item, they had a rare chance to get a Golden Wrench. Only 100 were given out. 14 of the recipients destroyed their wrenches in the "Golden Charity" for Child's Play to raise over $31,000 USD.
 * Robert A. Heinlein loaning Philip K. Dick money to help with the IRS and phoning to cheer him up during a bout of sickness. Heartwarming because:
 * They'd never met before.
 * Heinlein and Dick disagreed on pretty much everything.

""This is better. This is secret, and magical, and without precedent in my world.""
 * In 2003, in response to the "video games are violent and evil" publicity that came out of the Hot Coffee scandal, the writers of Penny Arcade decided to take things into their own hands. It started with one local hospital asking readers to donate money and toys for one month prior to Christmas. 7 years, over 60 hospitals world wide, and over 6.5 million dollars later, the charity still only runs that one month every year. The kicker? Every year the amount donated goes up. Even the columnist whose column inspired the charity was taken aback by the original response and was shocked and supportive of the effort.
 * Twilightsucks.com is a forum for people who, obviously, think that Twilight sucks. Nuttymadam is a rather infamous Twilight fan who makes videos about how anyone who doesn't like Twilight is crazy. When Nuttymadam fell on financial hard times and made a rather heartrending video about it, the people who run twilightsucks.com set up a fund to bail her out, and Nuttymadam thanked them on her Youtube page.
 * The story behind this picture of Rapunzel. A girl named Cyril blogged about her dreams of being a face actress at a Disney theme park, namely Rapunzel. On her blog, an Anon said that she was too ugly to be a princess. After hearing this, Alice made a picture of her as Rapunzel. With the picture came overwhelming support and Cyril's page became filled with comments about how beautiful she is.
 * Here's another Katrina story: a friend of this editor's recently heard at a Left Forum. When a group of women living in one of the poorest slums of Uganda heard about Katrina, they raised $1,000 dollars by breaking and selling rocks, then contacted the U.S. Embassy to Uganda, offering the $1,000 as relief money for the victims.
 * Yet another Katrina story: In the aftermath of the hurricane, Carnival Cruise Lines provided three cruise ships to house evacuees and relief workers. Canceling of scheduled cruises and pulling those ships from their regular routes undoubtably cost the cruise line millions.
 * On January 12, 2010, Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake, described as the strongest quake in that area since 1770. In the (at the time of this edit) two weeks since it happened, people from all over the world have rushed to aid their fellow man, in one of the most astonishing displays of kindness and charity this troper has ever seen. One amazing example came from LiveJournal fandom when user pinkfinity decided to organize an informal auction to raise disaster relief funds the day after the earthquake. In less than twenty-four hours, hundreds of LJ users volunteered their time and any skills they had for the donation effort, selling artwork, fanfiction, fanmixes, fanvids, knitting, baked goods, and anything else they could think of. The auction ran for seven days, from January 13th to January 20th, and has raised over $50,000. During an economic depression.
 * That, and the Red Cross website server was -lagging- because of the sheer volume of donations streaming in through the site.
 * Another story from Haiti: CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper found a young boy who had been beaten with a slab of concrete by looters. He carried the boy to safety, dragging him through a crowd as his crew and other Haitians helped to clear a spot for the boy to lay so he could dress his injury. (Warning: lots of blood)
 * Seven-year-old raises over 100,000 for Haiti
 * Palestinians from Gaza sent donations, saying that they understood their suffering.
 * Sean Penn has effectively moved to Haiti and spends most of his time working there.
 * Bungie Studios got one after the Haiti quake. How? First, they made a new $20 shirt where 100% of the profits went to the Red Cross. Second, until the end of February, they would give all money made by the Bungie Store to the Red Cross and they donated $77,000 in advance, all to help Haiti. Did I mention they make only a few bucks from the sale of Halo games, and only new ones, so they were losing thousands in doing this? They gave up all profits for a month and a half and then spent $77,000 more. This troper bought one of the shirts and is wearing it right now.
 * Blizzard Studios also is a very generous game studio. They have given over a million dollars to the Make-A-Wish foundation.
 * In the anthology Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs, journalist John Pilger describes how, the day after his documentary Cambodia: Year Zero was broadcast in the UK, the filmmakers were inundated with letters with donations from members of the public who were shocked at the plight of Cambodian orphans depicted in the film. People who wouldn't have been able to find Cambodia on a map the day before sent money to complete strangers so that other complete strangers would have their suffering relieved. Some of the donors sent the equivalent of a month's salary, based on one 50-minute film.
 * It's not much compared to the below, but the City of Orlando, FL isn't going to do Christmas decorations this year (09). So, what did Real Radio's "The Buckethead Show" (their midday talk show, after The Monsters in the Morning) do? A volunteer program to decorate Orlando.
 * Takumi's Heart, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising money to help a gay boy in Japan who very literally has holes in his heart. His family refused to help pay for his medical bills and even kicked him out of the house, attacking him with a belt. He now lives in an appartment that a friend is helping to pay for. So many people seem to have donated, that the runner of the site has closed donations until further notice so they can figure out exactly what Takumi needs more right now.
 * The story of Tetsugen and the three versions of the sutras. A Buddhist monk in 17th century Japan, Tetsugen decided to publish the sutra in japanese. He spent ten years traveling Japan collecting the money for this. When he finally had enough there was a massive flood in Uji and he donated the entire amount to help the victims. He then spent another ten years collecting donations, but at the end of that there was a famine in Japan and he again donated the entire amount to help feed the hungry. After a further twenty years he had finally gotten enough money to publish the sutras. Of the three versions of the sutras that Tetsugen made, the first two are said to surpass the last in every respect.
 * Speaking of Katrina, the fine folks of Radio KoL held a 24-hour telethon (hosted by one guy and a small tropical island's worth of coffee) to raise money for relief charities. Not only did they raise over six grand by themselves, the game designers (two guys who rely on donations themselves to keep the game running) matched the whole pot. End result? $26,792 total. From one day.
 * James Doohan. the actor who played Scotty in the original Star Trek, once received a letter from a fan. Reading it, he realized that the letter was unmistakably a suicide note. He immediately contacted the letter-writer and asked her to come to a convention he'd be appearing at in two weeks...and at the end of that convention, invited her to another one...and then another one. This went on quite some time, with Doohan personally inviting her to convention after convention, until eventually, she stopped showing up. Doohan had failed to save the envelope from her letter, and heard nothing more of it for eight years. Then, out of the blue, he received another letter from the fan - she'd just received her masters in electrical engineering, and wanted to thank him for the kindness he'd shown.
 * A short while ago, a Metafilter thread was started up by a person who wanted to save their friends from being tricked into a human trafficking scam. The friends had been flown in from Russia by a sponsor who assured them work as "hostesses in a lounge", a textbook case for eventual prostitution. The lounge, after thorough research, even turned out to be a strip club. Despite repeated attempts by the American friend to reach out to his/her Russian friends and keep them from meeting to sponsor, the girls insisted on going. Cue several hundred members of the Metafilter community offering information, support, and resources to keep the girls from going to meet their "sponsor". The whole thread can be read here, with the resolution being here. It's just amazing.
 * One Metafilter member offered to meet them at the bus station and put them up, no questions asked, while they were sorting everything out. Even though she was unemployed, she and her husband lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and she had just had surgery.
 * Facebook attempts to save a life. At the time of this posting, more than 20,000 people posted to beg someone they didn't know not to commit suicide.
 * Just in case the anonymous writer doesn't use Facebook, several members visited the Golden Gate Bridge on 13/06/10 to leave messages begging him/her to live.
 * Don't know if it was mentioned, but during the 1847 Great Potato Famine in Ireland, a group of Native Americans, the Choctaws, collected $710 and sent it to help starving Irish. It's a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming not only because Choctaws were on the other side of the world, but they had to face the Trail of Tears, a forced relocation by the USA governement in 1831. They were obliged to leave their fertile lands and goods behind, many of them died during the travel, and the community relocated in Oklahoma was very poor, so that money was really something.
 * This is both a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming and the Crowning Moment of Awesome for FNC pundit Bill O'Reilly. To explain, in 2010, the father of a fallen Marine in Iraq sued the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, a hategroup based out of Topeka, Kansas known for saying disgustingly awful things about America and the people serving in its military and then picketing the funerals of those soldiers who die in service to the nation, spewing their hatred to the mourning friends and family. A judge ruled against said father and ordered him to pay the Westboro Baptist Church's legal fees, some 16,000 dollars that the dead Marine's family simply did not have. In response, notorious FNC pundit Bill O'Reilly immediately cut and signed a check for that same amount and gave it to the father who sued the WBC. To Conservative fans of his, this has been seen as a generous act by a generous man. To Liberals, including his hatedom, this is seen as Even Evil Has Standards.
 * Every year, Milwaukee, WI radio station 96.5 WKLH holds their "Miracle Marathon" for the local children's hospital. For 60 straight hours they interview families of the kids who needed or still do need care there, raising for the past 6-7 years over one million dollars, going well over 13 million over the last 13 years they've done it. In 2010, a man walked in and left behind an envelope and said to not open it until they had a "power hour" or when the donations during that hour would have been matched. The man disappeared after leaving behind the envelope. When they finally opened it up, they found three dollars and a letter. In short, the letter said that the man was homeless and that was all the money he had. They had thought he was construction worker from near by.
 * All the support that's gone out to Katie. She's been reading all the comments.This and this, too.
 * When filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia, Angelina Jolie saw just how bad some people's lives were. This led her to donate large amounts of money to humanitarian efforts, go on missions to visit refugees, and adopt three children from third-world countries.
 * This post by the Bloggess. What initially started as an offer of $30 gift cards to the first 20 comments asking for help with Christmas gifts for their families gradually snowballed into the blog's readers offering to help additional commenters who were struggling to make ends meet for Christmas. Not only was every request for help (from some 450 people) matched with a donor, but the donors sent out a total of over $40,000 worth of donations.
 * James Harrison has been donating blood for over 56 years, after he promised to himself that he would after his own life was saved at 14 by the blood of others during chest surgery. The result? Two million saved lives. His blood has a very rare enzyme in it that's the only known treatment for Rhesus disease, which can either result in death or permanent brain damage for the baby diagnosed with it. To this day he's donated over 1000 times (a world record) and has helped make a vaccine with his blood. And to top it all off... his own grandson was saved by his blood.
 * The Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon. Hundreds of students dancing for 46 hours to raise money to support children with cancer, in the world's largest student-run philanthropy. Thousands filling the stands to support then and the visiting children, a weekend-long party just for them. Since it began, it's raised nearly $70 million, and inspired similar marathons in other schools. The amount of love and support poured out over the course of those 46 hours is immensely powerful. And then there's the Family Hour, where everyone hears stories from families whose children beat cancer...and families of the children who didn't. The Family Hour starts two hours before the marathon ends, so as everyone recovers from crying, the music is cranked up, and the arena turns into the biggest, most uplifting dance party ever, until the dancers are finally allowed to sit down for the first time in two days, and they announce how much money was raised this year. And the totals have been climbing each year, with the latest marathon raising $7.8 million.
 * When a girl's microphone gives out during the American National Anthem, the crowd helps her finish the song.
 * Lena Horne technically was not allowed to live in Hollywood, because she was black. A white man signed the lease on a Hollywood house so Lena could live there. Lena was, sad to say, not welcomed with open arms by her white neighbors. In fact a petition went around to get rid of her. Humphrey Bogart, who lived across the street, was outraged. He told Lena to notify him if anybody bothered her.
 * Sometimes, we need to remember that airplane pilots are people too...
 * Let Them Eat Cake: An aspiring rapper gets randomly invited to Paris Hilton's birthday party, and learns that the huge, expensive, fancy birthday cake won't be eaten, and will probably be thrown out. So, he takes the cake (literally), drives down to LA's infamous skid row (a notoriously poor district full of homeless people), and... serves it to the residents.
 * Catherynne M Valente (author of Palimpsest, The Orphans Tales, and several other books) was nominated for a Hugo. In the days before going to the ceremony, she received something very special in the mail. Even though she didn't end up winning the award, the amount of care and love that went into the package more than made up for it.

""... Because Santa sent me.""
 * This 4chan post. An anon goes into Game Stop to trade in his PlayStation 2 Slim, and sees a little boy whose family is too poor to buy the game he wants, and makes the boy's Christmas brighter instead of getting a new Xbox game.

"Youtube Comment: "This Video didn´t made my Day, but it makes his Day and thats what its all﻿ about :)""
 * Robert Downey Jr was struggling with alcoholism, down on his luck and unable to get a job. Mel Gibson comes to his rescue, keeping a roof over Robert's head and food on the table. The only thing Mel asks of Robert for the lesson in cactus hugging is that Robert some day help the next guy. In the meantime, Mel had a drunken rant about Jews to a Jewish officer, and he's been the one who's struggled. And so some day became the day Mel presented Robert with an award at the American Cinematheque, and Mel himself was the next man. Proof that Tony Stark has a heart!
 * Autistic 8-year-old Robert Wood, Jr. wandered away from his family and got lost in the woods in Hanover, VA. For nearly a week, thousands of volunteers came out to assist in the search. On the sixth day, he was found alive. Manly Tears were shed.
 * This video from Russia Today. It really brings a smile seeing Greek civilians rushing to help the poor girl...
 * After the horrible bombing of the governmental area and shooting at a youth political camp in Norway, the main hospital of Norway called for people with the O- blood type to give blood to the victims. Only hours later, the hospital announced that it couldn't take any more blood. So many people were willing to give.
 * This video of bystanders lifting a burning car to save a motorcyclist.
 * Yukio Shige, a 65-year-old former policeman, has spent his retirement on a mission to stop those who go to the cliffs of Tojimbo from jumping.
 * On August 17, 1999, a major earthquake struck Turkey, killing 17,000 to 35,000 Turks. Greece, which was not known to be a friend of Turkey, immediately mustered a comprehensive relief effort from all levels of government, NGOs, and individual citizens. The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs were in constant contact with its Turkish counterpart. The five largest cities of Greece sent a joint aid convoy. Universities sent medical supplies. Blood banks were swamped with people wanting to send blood to Turkey. Turkish newspapers had headlines containing words like "neighbor" and "true friend."
 * Then, on September 7, Athens was hit by a powerful earthquake that killed 143 people. The Greek embassy and consulates in Turkey were flooded with calls by Turks wanted to find out where to donate blood-and one man offered to donate his kidney to "a Greek in need."
 * Children in Need, there's something incredibly lifting about an entire nation coming together and donating to a charity that helps children.
 * The British documentary series Secret Millionaire (in which millionaires merge into struggling communities to provide not only one-off financial contributions, but continual aid) is just one big, constant, Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. I dare you to watch it without choking up.
 * It gives some of the recipients their own crowning moments. One in particular which stands out is the instance where an older couple realised the man from, as far as they knew a documentary of sorts, was living in a trailer for the duration of his stay, immediately invited him to stay in their home. They had absolutely no idea who this man really was, and the wife was currently recieving treatment for cancer, yet they still invited this complete stranger into their homes.
 * The American version is shaping up to do just the same.
 * The day after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, the United States Armed Services launched an assistance operation called 'Operation Tomodachi', or Operation Friend.
 * In late 2011 (so close to Thanksgiving) Dan Green's wife passed away after giving birth to twins leaving him to raise them alone. His fans would have none of that, naturally. Little Kuriboh got involved as well.
 * Mike Pollock also got involved to help his friend in a time of need.
 * On the site Tumblr, a post of a man searching for his daughter Haley who ran away on December 26, 2011 was being spread around. This troper saw it and it been reposted around 800 times. I came back around twelve hours later and that number had risen to over one-hundred thousand. Ten hours later, another seventy-five thousand people had reposted it. Here is the link to the man's story : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVIPQ Uma DS 4
 * And a happy ending - his daughter was found safe and well in California and is back home.
 * One guy wrapped a series of christmas presents like a Matryoshka doll, at the center of all this was
 * The music festival Woodstock had its own: The band Creedence Clearwater Revival was booked at a rather poor time (1:00 AM in the morning) where pretty much everyone was asleep. The band thought about leaving the stage since no one would really listen to them, until they saw a lone light made by a lighter in the distance. They stayed and played their entire set just for that one light. Peace and love, man.
 * Out of all of these, I liked this one the most for some reason. Just put yourself in that persons shoes. It's like they're playing just for you.
 * When Hurricane Gustav threatened Texas in 2008, the Obama campaign essentially said, "Hey, we'll get our donors to donate to the Red Cross. You might want to ramp up your servers, our guys can be a little intense." "Sure," thought the Red Cross, "we've been through Katrina, 9/11, we can handle it." The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross website in under ten minutes.
 * Here's A Very ACLU Christmas. "And with all due respect to Mr. Schulz, I’d like to suggest that that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."
 * There's a small story of of a boy in Los Angeles named Caine and how he created a arcade out of cardboard boxes. The little kid waits for people to come, waiting for just that one customer to just join in and have some fun. So a film director happens to stop by for a replacement door handle, and sees it. The father sees it through the security camera and couldn't believes his eyes. Then the film director decides to invite people into the area and soon enough NBC got wind and the rest was history.

"Tara: (in Twilight’s voice) I love you, Dragon. Dragon: (stunned, muttering) …love you, too, Twilight."
 * The white members of The Rat Pack once forced a hotel to desegregate by announcing that either they would allow Sammy Davis Jr. (and other black people) to stay there, or Sinatra and a number of other members of the Rat Pack would not only not stay there, they wouldn't perform there, either! The pressure applied by him and his fellow Rat Packers was instrumental in causing Las Vegas to become one of the first cities to fully desegregate.
 * In 1951, actress Grace Kelly took a bold stand against a racist incident involving Black American expatriate singer/dancer Josephine Baker, when Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club in New York refused Baker as a customer. Kelly, who was dining at the club when this happened, was so disgusted that she rushed over to Baker (whom she had never met), took her by the arm, and stormed out with her entire party, vowing never to return (and she never did). They later became close friends after that night. Later when Baker was near bankruptcy Kelly (who by that time had become The Princess of Monaco) and her husband Rainier III of Monaco offered her financial assistance.
 * There is an article about a young girl named Winter Slade, who wanted to donate money to help out an animal called the Pine Marten for her 7th birthday. Unfortunately, when she told her friends about this, the parents go out and say "Oh, isn't that such a stupid idea, wouldn't you say?" all within earshot of the little girl and her mother. The mother goes into full Mama Bear mode and gives the following retort to the harsh parents, "Well, I guess your child won't be invited to the party then." She then made a Reddit account, with one simple wish: "Make my daughter believe in humanity again." And those people did.
 * A woman who was running in the 2012 London Marathon, to raise money for the Samaritans after her brother's suicide, tragically collapsed and died only a mile from the finish line. When the news broke worldwide, the world responded. At the time of writing, £600,000 has been donated and the Samaritans have put it in a special fund in her name, to go specifically to projects her family feel she would have liked.
 * Don Ritchie, an ex-salesman and soldier, spent fifty years living next to one of Australia's most notorious suicide spots, The Gap. He and his wife have spent most of that time stopping hundreds of potential suicides from jumping. He passed away in early May 2012.
 * After Tara Strong, voice actress for Twilight Sparkle, had to cancel a Con appearance, one mother posted on the con's facebook page how sad her autistic son was going to be to miss meeting "Twilight". Strong contacted her, got her phone number and CALLED to speak to the boy personally.