Tales of Triumph: 20 Real-Life Stories That Inspired Us
Music, books, and movies can inspire us deeply, but nothing is more encouraging than the moving stories of real humans. There are roughly 7.8 billion people in the world, and we don’t know the names of most of them. But among the anonymous, the uncelebrated, and the neglected, we often find the most striking examples of bravery, brightness, and kindness.
Today, it’s time to finally put a name on some of the many unnamed heroes that make the world a little better day by day. From the tender tale of retired adults who volunteer as baby cuddlers to the unlikely story of a successful athlete with Down syndrome, we’ll be taking a close look at 20 utterly inspiring real-life stories.
Hospital Baby Cuddlers
When a concept works for all the parties involved, it’s a win-win idea. The concept of hospital baby cuddlers surely fits the description, as it benefits cuddlers, babies, parents, and even hospital staff. But what is it all about?
The cuddlers are retired adults, and the babies are premature newborns who are too weak to leave the hospital. Unlike nurses—whose job is to monitor the baby’s vital signs—cuddlers are tasked with keeping the babies company when their parents are not around.
That Human Contact
In the words of Bob McElwain, one of the retired adults who volunteers as a baby cuddler, “The baby isn’t listening to what [he] says. And [he] is used to that.” Nevertheless, experts believe babies benefit from having someone to engage with, as “that human contact makes all the difference.”
As for the retired adults, they seem to have a blast. McElwain, for example, loves to reminisce about his days as a financial manager and share his football opinions with the babies.
All It Takes Is a Good Idea
Baby cuddlers are everyday heroes because they take some of their time off to help the sick children of people they have never met. That’s kindness in a nutshell. However, the Hospital Baby Cuddlers program is inspiring because it shows that, sometimes, all it takes is a good idea to improve the world.
Nearly one-fourth of adults over 65 are socially isolated, and 10.5% of all live births are preterm. Who could’ve thought that one inspiring idea was all it took to tackle both issues?
Miss America Serves
When it comes to beauty pageants, there are a lot of misconceptions. While many believe these are misogynistic contests in which women are ranked according to their body shapes, beauty pageants are about poise, leadership, and artistic talent. As for Miss America Serves, it is about something even nobler.
Led by Betty Cantrell, aka Miss America 2016, Miss America Serves is a program in which beauty-pageant titleholders, contestants, and volunteers get together to address critical issues such as pollution, social isolation, poverty, and homelessness.
A Priceless Contribution
Betty Cantrell doesn’t need to get involved with charity programs. Miss America winners get a prize of between $50K and $100K, not to mention tons of exposure and professional opportunities. But wearing the crown isn’t the same as deserving it; Miss America 2016 certainly does.
Betty could have chosen to spend her days making appearances on TV shows or living a glamorous lifestyle. Instead, she takes time off to visit isolated elders at the Washington DC VA Medical Center. Her contribution is priceless, but she does it for free.
The Real Meaning of Being a Miss
Betty, of course, isn’t alone in her journey. Like her, many people associated with Miss America have decided to spend their days doing things that don’t necessarily benefit them—but make the world a better place. This includes cleaning parks and beaches, collecting clothes, feeding the homeless, and stocking food pantries.
So, the next time someone says that beauty pageants are misogynistic, please remind them there’s more to being Miss America than looking good on a magazine cover. And that’s what sets real Misses apart.
Grahamtastic Connection
Grahamtastic Connection: does the name ring a bell? Like many other great non-profit organizations, this one has sadly flown under the radar despite impacting the lives of more than 1,500 children since 1998. Its goal is to provide free technology to kids with cancer and other serious illnesses.
Stranded in a hospital bed, sick children feel isolated from their friends and family. Grahamtastic Connection works hard to provide them with all the necessary equipment (including iPads and robots) to reach out to the ones they love.
An Inspiring Motivation
In the late ’90s, the former art director Leslie Morissette went through the worst imaginable nightmare: watching her child battle leukemia. Morissette’s son, Graham, passed away at the tragically young age of eight on Christmas Eve out of all nights. Devastated, Morissette founded the Grahamtastic Connection organization.
Inspired by her son’s love for the Internet (then a fairly new technological trend), Morissette decided it was her job to make sure every sick child would have access to the world wide web, regardless of their parents’ financial condition.
Helping Sick Children for More Than 20 Years
It takes guts to go through something as horrible as losing a child and still take something positive out of it. If there’s an unacclaimed hero out there, that’s Leslie Morrissette! More than a mere project, her organization has been a huge success that’s been up and running for more than 20 years now.
Why haven’t people heard about Grahamtastic Connection before? We guess the latest sports news and celebrity scandals sell more magazines than feel-good stories… Luckily, we still got time to change that.
Partners In Health
Founded in 1987, Partners In Health started as an organization that aimed to provide high-quality health care to the poor people of Haiti. They expanded to Africa, Latin America, Russia, and even the United States in the following decades.
Partners In Health is different because people from impoverished countries don’t just deserve basic healthcare needs; they deserve the very best available treatment! It’s an ambitious and, some would think, impossible goal, but the late Dr. Paul Farmer bravely carried it out.
Making the Difference
Not your typical Harvard Medical School intellectual, Dr. Paul Farmer passed away in 2022 in Rwanda, where he worked as a professor in a university he co-founded. He believed strongly that high-quality healthcare can be available to all and acted on this belief through Partners In Health.
Farmer came up with brilliant solutions to achieve his goal, which included teaching the local population how to provide medical assistance to others. He was also a genius at raising money for his organization.
A Work in Progress
Dr. Paul Farmer isn’t an unsung hero: he’s a global medical reference and was awarded the 2020 Berggruen Prize for his work as a humanitarian. Nonetheless, he deserves even more credit for everything good he’s given to the world.
One thing’s for sure: even though Farmer is no longer around, Partners In Health will continue to be. In 2023, Cummings Foundation made a game-changing $50 million donation to the organization as a way of honoring the man behind it all.
Little Dresses for Africa
A little dress can make a huge difference in a young woman’s life. The people behind the non-profit organization Little Dresses for Africa know about this, and that’s why they work hard to make and distribute simple dresses through orphanages, schools, and churches in Africa.
Everybody who contributes to Little Dresses for Africa deserves to be praised. Still, there was one sewer in particular who made a difference at the organization and, ultimately, in the lives of countless young African women: 99-year-old Lillian Weber.
One Thousand Dresses for Africa
The glowing Lillian Weber passed away at the age of 101, but not without becoming a sewing celebrity first. Her name made headlines in several outlets (including NBC News), not really because of her sewing talent, but because of her brave decision to sew a dress a day for impoverished African children at the age of 99!
By the time she celebrated her 100th birthday, Weber achieved her goal of making and donating 1,000 dresses to Little Dresses for Africa.
It’s Never Too Late to Change the World
The word ‘retired’ is defined as “having left one’s job and ceased to work.” However, the inspiring examples of Lillian Weber and other brave retired adults show that “ceased to work” should be cut out of the definition.
Instead of simply enjoying her golden years, Weber pushed herself to the limit at the ripe age of 99 to make the lives of children she’d never met better. How can one ever say “It’s too late for me” again after this story?
MEANS Database
Food waste is shocking. According to Feeding America, more than $408 billion of food is thrown away yearly in the United States, making for roughly 120 billion pounds of wasted food. Projects such as MEANS Database are trying to put an end to that.
MEANS Database connects food businesses with charities and non-profits that distribute food freely to the people who need it. All that businesses have to do is log into the database to find the charitable organizations in their area.
The Woman Behind MEANS
MEANS Database is an encouraging project, but the woman behind it is perhaps even more inspiring. Her name is Maria Rose Belding, and she started running the MEANS Database project when she was just a teenager.
Belding got the idea for MEANS Database at the age of 14, when she was volunteering at an Iowa food charity. She was horrified that she was sometimes forced to throw food away in front of hungry people waiting in line to get a meal.
A Clever Way of Feeding the Hungry
While most of her colleagues were flirting and going to parties, Belding was busy running MEANS Database out of her dorm with the help of some like-minded friends. Her hard work made a difference, as the project quickly went from two to 26 American states.
In the Database’s first year alone, Belding and her team moved about 30,000 pounds worth of food and reached out to corporations as massive as Starbucks. Without MEANS, all that food would’ve gone to waste.
Yisrael Kristal
What is it that makes the late Yisrael Kristal such as inspiration? Is it that he was recognized by the Guinness Book of World records as one of the ten oldest persons ever lived? Losing his mother at a very young age? Or working at a candy factory when he was only 17?
Surprisingly, none of that. Kristal is important because he lived through two World Wars, survived the horrors of the Holocaust, lived to be 113, and still made the world a better place.
Going Through the Unimaginable
The 20th century was a busy one, for better and worse. From Henry Ford to Bill Gates, it was a century of innovators. But it was also a century of violence and bloodshed, marked by the outbreak of two World Wars.
World War II was particularly awful, much due to the unspeakable events of the Holocaust. They left a deep mark on all of mankind, but they were especially horrible to the Jew people who lived in Nazi concentration camps. A former Auschwitz “resident,” Yisrael Kristal, was one of them.
The Embodiment of Tolerance
In one way or another, all humans suffer. But arguably, nobody has known suffering—and survived it—quite like Yisrael Kristal. After seeing his children die in the Jewish ghetto, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he worked as a forced laborer before being liberated.
When World War II ended, Kristal moved to Israel and spent the rest of his days volunteering to speak to schoolchildren about his experiences. After being through so much, this inspiring man still had enough kindness in his heart to promote love, tolerance, and understanding.
Arnold Abbott
In 2019, Florida mourned the passing of Arnold Abbott, a man known locally as a caring soul and a friend of the homeless. The world isn’t such a bad place, and many kind people take time off to help the ones who need them the most. So, what was it that made Abbott special?
What sets Abbott apart is that he spent the last years of his life feeding the homeless despite being told not to do so by the Fort Lauderdale police!
When Helping Others Becomes a Crime
Ensuring a series of strict anti-homeless laws, the Fort Lauderdale police arrested Arnold Abbott on several occasions for… feeding the homeless! Shocking as it sounds, Fort Lauderdale law prohibited such a charitable action instead of incentivizing it.
At one point, a police officer even screamed, “Drop that plate!” at Abbott, as if he was holding a gun! Approached by the authorities on many occasions for committing the same “crime,” Abbott continued to do what he loved most: in his own words, “help his fellow man.”
What’s Right Isn’t Written
Selfless acts of kindness toward strangers are always inspiring. But Arnold Abbott did it against all odds at the age of 90. He proved to everyone that what is right isn’t written in the law: it’s something one knows within their heart.
When helping others without asking for anything in return becomes illegal, that’s when we know that the world is sick. Luckily, we can count on people like Abbott to cure it by leading by example, even if such entails being treated as a criminal.
Mark Bustos
Mark Bustos is amazing. He is young, hip, and successful. He’s a New York-based celebrity hairstylist with more than 277K followers on Instagram and his own Big-Apple beauty salon. So, how does he choose to spend his Sundays? Going to parties? Traveling? Maybe hanging out with supermodels?
Well, think again! Bustos, whose services are usually worth several hundred dollars, spends most of his Sundays cutting the hair of homeless NYC people, and he does it all in exchange for nothing.
Chops That Make a Difference
From Monday to Friday, Mark Bustos is busy trimming the hair of New York’s most lavish celebrities and richest aristocrats. He’s very good at it, and that’s how he makes a living. However, his most important work is done on Sundays for free.
In addition to a new haircut, Bustos also offers food and a grooming kit to the homeless people who accept his help (according to him, about 80% of the men and women he inquires). But how much of a difference do his chops make?
Validation and Self-Confidence
One of the worst things about homelessness is how dehumanizing it can be. Homeless people need food, clothes, and medicine, but they must also be respected, validated, and seen by their peers. That’s why Bustos’ work is so important.
More than just a haircut, he’s giving the homeless something they can feel good about: a reason to look in the mirror and feel validated, self-confident, and beautiful. Bustos could be hanging out with the rich and famous; instead, he’s making a difference.
Ryan’s Well Foundation
In Africa, an estimated 315,000 children die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water. Every hour, a reported 115 people pass away in the Mother Continent due to improper hygiene and contaminated water. Ryan’s Well Foundation is a non-profit organization trying to tackle the issue.
Their mission is to build deep wells in countries such as Uganda so the local population can access clean groundwater reserves. They also create protected springs, build rainwater harvesting tanks, and do extensive water and wash community training.
A Boy on a Mission
What’s particularly inspiring about the Ryan Well’s Foundation is that it was started by a schoolboy. A Canadian citizen, young Ryan Hreljac, was shocked to learn that millions of children in Africa don’t have access to clean water.
Inspired by his first pen pal and future adopted brother Jimmy, Hreljac started raising money to build wells in Africa as a child. At first, he collected money by doing house chores. It took him four months of work to make $70 before he realized building a single well cost about $2K.
Doing His Part
On the Ryan Well’s Foundation official website, Ryan Hreljac encourages people to “find something [they] are passionate about” and “take steps to act.” He decided to focus on the issue of clean-water availability in underdeveloped countries, and he’s been doing his part since he was a young boy.
Now a renowned worldwide speaker on the subjects of water and sanitation in Africa, Hreljac was the youngest person ever to be awarded the Order of Ontario. Ryan’s Well Foundation currently accepts donations.
Dr. Ricardo Pun-Chong
The man in the picture is called Ricardo Pun-Chong, and he is a Peruvian doctor with a big heart. In Peru, struggling families are sometimes forced to travel hundreds of miles just to get medical care in big cities like Lima.
The journeys—crossing mountains, rivers, and unsafe roads—can be incredibly dangerous. And after getting to the city, families often sleep on the floors of hospitals because they cannot afford to stay at a pricey hotel. Pun-Chong thought this wasn’t right.
A Place to Feel at Home
Without any support from the government, Dr. Ricardo Pun-Chong started helping Peruvian families in need, especially the ones traveling with sick children. He went out of his way to find free accommodation for these children and their families while they got medical care.
From 2008 onwards, Pun-Chong has been running a non-profit organization called Inspira. He managed to raise $100K for the project (a fortune according to Peruvian standards) and helped countless sick children “feel at home” while being treated.
CNN Hero of the Year
In 2018, Dr. Ricardo Pun-Chong’s efforts were recognized internationally, as he was named CNN’s Hero of the Year. The accolade is well-deserved, but it’s only a milestone in the long journey to help the grappling sick children (and their families) of impoverished Peru.
If anyone deserves to have access to the very best, that’s sick children. But while most looked away at this fundamental issue in Peru, Pun-Chong dared to say, “Enough is enough!” That award fits him like a glove, don’t you think so?
Gotta Have Sole Foundation
Most teens worry about finding a girlfriend, looking cool, and playing video games. Not Nicholas Lowinger, though. On the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah, he founded a non-profit foundation that’s still active today and has helped to change the lives of countless children.
His project is called Gotta Have Sole Foundation, and there’s no doubt Lowinger has both—both sole and soul! Through his foundation, he donates shoes to homeless or impoverished children with the help of more than 2,700 other passionate volunteers.
A Lifelong Passion
Teens are known to go through phases sometimes, but Nicholas Lowinger’s charitable project is still up and running after many years. Now an adult, the Rhode Island native is proud to have delivered shoes to over 45,000 children across 38 American states.
In all truth, this has been his life passion ever since he was a child! Lowinger got the idea for the Gotta Have Sole Foundation when he visited a homeless shelter with his mom at the young age of five, way before his Bar Mitzvah.
Taking Steps Into the Right Direction
Impressed by the conditions in which some of America’s poorest children lived, five-year-old Nicholas Lowinger felt ashamed of his light-up shoes; it wouldn’t be right to brag about them when so many children in the homeless shelter didn’t even have shoes of their own.
After turning the Gotta Have Sole Foundation into a nationwide hit, Lowiger decided to start a new program called Serving Love, which aims to provide athletic footwear to children who want to play sports but don’t have the money to buy sneakers.
Charlie Rocket
What does it mean to be successful? If you had asked a young Charlie Jabaley (also known by his stage name Charlie Rocket), he would have probably told you something like “Being famous, knowing important people, and making tons of money.” But today, his answer would be completely different.
A self-made millionaire with a lot of cred in the music industry, Jabaley found fame and fortune by working with prominent hip-hop artists such as Travis Porter and 2 Chainz. Then, he found out what truly matters in life.
The Many Faces of Charlie
Charlie Rocket thought he had it all when his music-executive career allowed him to make millions and land a Grammy Award. Known as “CEO Charlie” back then, he was also seemingly oblivious that he weighed 300 pounds and had a severe binge-eating addiction.
His whole world fell apart when he found out he had a brain tumor. What good were all those millions if Charlie was hurting himself? It was then he had an epiphany. He decided to become a different kind of millionaire.
The Right Kind of Millionaire
Charlie Jabaley went from being the selfish and self-destructive “CEO Charlie” to becoming the real Charlie Rocket. He started living a healthy lifestyle, beat his brain tumor, completed his first Ironman triathlon in New Zealand, quit his company, and planned to touch the lives of millions of people.
By setting up a good example, the author of “The Life and Death of CEO Charlie” has inspired countless men and women to be the best kind of millionaire: in his own words, “one that transforms people’s lives.”
Melissa Blake
Cyberbullying is no joke. According to the National Institutes of Health, cyberbullying victims report a higher prevalence of suicide ideation and depressive thoughts. However, there’s at least one beautiful woman out there who is fighting cyberbullying by… Putting on a smile.
The DeKalb disability activist Melissa Blake is famous for laughing in the face of her haters online and being unaffected by what Internet trolls think of her looks. A freelance blog writer, she’s been inspiring people one selfie at a time.
Shaking off Online Trolls
How mean are online trolls? After making a few political remarks online, Melissa Blake was met with a wave of criticism. But the critics didn’t focus on her political arguments: instead, they answered with stuff as horrible as “you’re ugly,” “no one is ever going to date you,” and “you’re repulsive to look at.”
Living with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome all her life, Blake decided to fight back. The disability advocate did so by smiling and sharing three selfies online. The tweet quickly went viral.
She Who Laughs Last…
The online trolls thought they were going to hurt Melissa Blake’s feelings. But this woman is strong. After all, she’d completed more than 25 surgeries by the time she was 17! Now, she inspires many disabled and non-disabled people; as for the trolls, who even cares?
In 2020, Blake (a fashion enthusiast) modeled for the first time after being invited to the annual Runway of Dreams show at New York Fashion Week. She’s proof that love conquers hate, a powerful lesson in such loathsome times.
Steve Greig
All animals are cute. But let’s face it: to most people, some are cuter than others. That’s where Steve Greig, a proud Colorado pet dad, comes in. After mourning the passing of a beloved pet for months, he decided he needed to do something good for the world to find solace.
His way of giving back? Adopting the “least adoptable” dogs he could find at the shelter, the ones people neglected for not being cute enough. He started with an old chihuahua with bad knees and hasn’t stopped since.
A Beautiful, Diverse Family
The “least adoptable” pets aren’t just “not cute.” As you can tell by the picture, they’re actually adorable! However, they have special needs, including specific eating regimens and expensive medicine. And that’s why Steve Greig wakes up every day at five in the morning just to care for his big pet family.
The Internet’s busiest pet dad doesn’t seem to mind the work, though, as his big, diverse family makes him very happy. Oh, and have we mentioned that he also adopted a lovely pig called Bikini?
An Inspiring Animal Lover
Steve Greig was devastated by the loss of a pet and decided to dedicate much of his life to caring for overlooked animals. His kindness and hard work, however, are well-deservedly not. A popular Instagram star, Greig has close to 500K followers on social media.
Greig’s animal passion also granted him features in outlets such as Today and The New Yorker. He sets an example to all animal lovers: don’t adopt the pets you need; adopt the ones that need you most.
Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary
South America is a continent torn with socio-economical issues, from poverty and violence to political corruption. In such a place, animal care is seldom a priority. However, there’s at least one safe place for animals in the Latin-American continent: Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary and it’s the first of its kind in Colombia.
A haven for roughly 40 animals, Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary is run by the Colombian native Juliana Castañeda, a woman whose personal story is almost as inspiring as her lifelong passion for animals.
A Big Place to Save and Help Animals
In a country where 84% of the population is Catholic or Protestant, Juliana Castañeda grew up under the influence of an aunt who was a Hindu nun. Exposed to ancient Vedic wisdom from a young age, Castañeda decided to become a vegan at the young age of five—long before it was considered cool.
Her precocious veganism was perhaps the first sign of her deep love for animals. According to The Dodo, her childhood dream was to “Have a big place to save and help animals.”
Don’t Give Up on Childhood Dreams
Most people give up on their childhood dreams, but not Juliana Castañeda. After visiting many yoga temples, volunteering, and completing a Physics BA in Uruguay, she returned to Colombia to fulfill her lifelong dream.
She then founded Juliana’s Animal Shelter, the “big place to save and help animals” she had wanted to build since she was a little kid. Castañeda’s inspiring tale shows that childhood dreams can make the world a better place if one’s ready to commit to them.
Cheetah Conservation Fund
In the last four decades, roughly 50% of the population of cheetahs has disappeared. According to National Geographic, cheetahs are on the brink of extinction. In the ’80s (and up until now), they were violently hunted by cattle breeders in Africa who contributed to the rapid disappearance of the species.
Cheetahs, the world’s fastest land animal, can run up to 60 miles per hour but cannot escape their demise. Luckily, they have a brave friend in Dr. Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund.
The Cheetah Doctor
When the former winemaker Dr. Laurie Marker visited Namibia in the ’80s, she was shocked to discover that Namibian cattle breeders had decimated nearly half of the local cheetah population in just ten years. She could’ve returned to her comfy winery in Oregon, but her love for cheetahs inspired her to do something incredible.
Instead of saying, “Let someone else deal with the issue,” Marker decided it was her job to protect the endangered cheetahs of Namibia and devoted the rest of her life to their study and protection.
Studying and Protecting Cheetahs Since 1990
Today, the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia is the world’s leading research, education, and conservation center for cheetahs. To finance the center, Dr. Laurie Marker sold her every possession, leaving her comfortable life in the United States behind. She did it all out of selfless love for a species needing a friend.
The Cheetah Conservation Fund has been active since 1990, but the struggle to protect cheetahs from extinction is ongoing. Creating a sustainable paradise for cheetahs, the Fund currently accepts donations.
The Man With the Golden Arm
“The man with the golden arm”—sounds like the title of an upcoming James Bond movie, doesn’t it? But in reality, it is the nickname of a man who’s done more good for the world than Agent 007 can ever aspire to. His real name is James Harrison, and he saved the lives of more than two million babies.
After finding out about his unusual plasma composition, Harrison donated blood plasma on more than 1,000 occasions for a whopping 60 years.
Australia’s Greatest Blood Donor
Born in Australia in 1936, James Harrison started donating blood in 1954. Shortly after, doctors discovered that his blood contained super-strong antibodies that could be used to treat Rhesus disease, the most common form of a potentially-fatal condition known as hemolytic disease of the newborn.
As all Spider-Man fans know, “With great power comes great responsibility.” That day, Harrison became the man with the golden arm. He had the superpower to save the lives of millions of babies, and he embraced it like a real hero.
Ready to Help Until the End
There are many everyday heroes out there. But James Harrison is perhaps the only person who can proudly say that he directly saved the lives of more than two million babies. He did it not only because he had an unusual plasma composition but because he genuinely wanted to help others.
In 2018, Harrison made his final blood donation as he reached 81 (the maximum-allowed age for donors in Australia). More than inspiring, his contribution to humanity is just too priceless to put into words.
Lou Xiaoying
In China, 100,000 babies are abandoned every year. The number is quite impressive, but, unbelievably, it points in the right direction. Just roughly one decade ago, it stood at a staggering 570,000! Lou Xiaoying, the woman in the picture, may have been partially responsible for that change for the better.
Xiaoying inspired fellow citizens and countless people all over the world by saving more than 30 abandoned babies throughout her life. She did it despite living in extremely humble conditions.
Lou Went Against All Odds
It’s amazing when millionaires and celebrities adopt children from underdeveloped countries. But would they dare to do the same if they could barely feed themselves? Lou Xiaoying, who passed away at 88, worked as a rubbish recycler in the Chinese province of Zhejiang.
It was precisely inside dustbins and garbage cans that she found many of the babies she adopted. She did it despite living in a country where child abandonment was normal, despite being very poor, and despite being old.
The Great Mother of China
What does it mean to be a mother? Is it just about giving birth to children and caring for them? Or is it about something much, much deeper? The utterly inspiring example of Lou Xiaoying shows that some women don’t need to have children of their own to become mothers: in their hearts, they’re mothers to all children.
While things have improved in China, it’s still a brutal country to be a motherless child. Well, maybe not so much when lovely Lou was still around…
Chris Nikic
The Ironman triathlon is a world-famous challenge consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26-mile marathon. Completing Ironman is a major milestone in the life of anyone who’s ever done it, including healthy people in pretty good shape.
In 2020, however, one particular Ironman triathlete raised eyebrows. His name is Chris Nikic, and he was the first person with Down syndrome to complete the challenge. That alone is inspiring, but wait until you hear how he got there!
Slow and Steady Wins the Race (Literally)
Before deciding to become an Ironman triathlete, Chris Nikic was an obese kid with major health issues. For one, he only started walking properly at four and couldn’t eat solid foods until he was five. But in 2017, something clicked, and he decided to make a change in his life.
He started training with Ironman veteran Dan Grieb; his routine started with one single pushup per day and slowly developed into strict training sessions of up eight hours per day.
The True Meaning of Victory
Chris Nikic’s hard work paid off three years after that first pushup. He became the first person with Down syndrome to complete the demanding Ironman challenge, and he was ecstatic as he celebrated with his girlfriend. He set the example not only to all other aspiring disabled athletes but to all people who dream of doing the impossible.
Remarkably, Nikic was only 21 years old at the time. Now, he’s an ESPY Awards winner, Special Olympics aspirant, and Adidas spokesperson. If that’s not inspiring, we don’t know what can be…