【推荐1】A restaurant owner’s remarkable act of heroism saved many lives during a storm in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, which destroyed a local restaurant.

Tracy Harden, the owner of Chuck’s Dairy Bar, rushed her staff into a walk-in cooler moments before a tornado hit the establishment on Friday.

Harden spoke to Good Morning America reporter Robin Roberts on Monday alongside two employees, Barbara Pinkins and Carolyn Washington, who were both in the restaurant when the tornado hit.

As the horrible tornado tore through the local area, Harden said she only had a minute of advance notice before it came moving rapidly through the restaurant.

“I got two text messages back-to-back from my sister and my daughter in Vicksburg and they both said, “There’s a tornado down, get to a safe place.’ At the same time I had my teenage cashier came running towards the back of the building saying, ‘My mother is on the phone and she said there is a tornado down here.’ At that point, most of us were towards the back of the building and the lights flickered(闪烁). And I just shouted, ‘Cooler!’ And my husband opened the cooler door and started pushing us in.”

Harden said that once her husband got them all inside, including himself, “he lost control of the door, the wind took the door and somehow he was able to get the door back.”

“Just before it shut, he looked up and he said, ‘I see the sky,’ so that let us know that this was way worse than anything we could have imagined,” she continued. “And the roof was gone.”

Pinkins, meanwhile, recalled the chaos(混乱场面)before the tornado touched the restaurant, as Harden led people to safety. She said she remembered hearing Harden say,“Calm down. Everybody gets to the cooler!”

“By the time we got to the cooler, I couldn’t hear anything but the ceiling falling,” Pinkins said through tears, hugging Harden.

【推荐3】When Lamont Thomas, a retired restaurant employee, became an empty-nester, it was the end of a parenting story. A couple years ago, the divorced father of two became a hero when he took on a kid named Michael Perez in 2001.

“He was a good young man and I just hated to see him in the welfare system,” Thomas said.

Thomas eventually adopted Perez, who now works as a nurse.

Perez was just the beginning. Over the next 15 years, Thomas raised more than 30 kids. He did so all as a single parent and with all of his heart.

“Every child that I have had, it was my goal to make a difference in their lives,” he said.

When he retired from raising children to spend time fishing and traveling, that didn’t last for long.

“It really was a shocker,” Perez said. “I didn’t expect for him to restart and to do it all over again.”

Thomas began to foster again when he found out that five brothers and sisters all under the age of 6 were going to be permanently broken up. To guarantee they stayed a family, he adopted all of them too.

“I had to help them. They deserved to be raised together,” Thomas said.

After Thomas’ story first aired, CBS News received a lot of surprising mail from women who expressed interest in the great man. Some notes weren’t obvious, others were braver, “Ask Mr. Thomas if he would like a pen pal,” wrote one woman, while another said, “I’ll marry Lamont!”

But the kids see no room for romance, nor does Thomas.

“I was about to change my phone number,” he said.

So he remains single. He spent Thanksgiving with family and is more grateful than ever.

【推荐2】When a woman was talkative while checking out at a Dollar General, her cashier, Emily Dunean didn’t think much of it. But she stayed attentive as the 85-year-old told her about herself. A man behind her in line noticed what was happening, too.

Gerald Swindle was in a hurry to go hunting that day and was a bit annoyed with how long their conversation was going. But as Gerald waited for his turn, his attitude began to change. Not only did he conclude that hunting wasn’t more important than their conversation, but found himself captivated by what the elderly woman said once he stopped to listen.

“You were patient with this lady,” Gerald later said in a video recalling what had happened. “You did nothing but followed her conversation, listening to every word she said, and never rushing her.”

He added, “You showed me what people ought to be. Sometimes it might be the only person they talk to this week. You inspired me and sometimes I need that, so I appreciate it.”

Since posting the video online, it’s become popular with nearly 2 million views!

“I never expected this to come about because it was just a regular day for me. I was just doing my job,” Emily said.

As the comment section quickly filled with others sharing how inspired they felt by Emily’s kindness, higher-ups at Dollar General heard of the story. One day, members from the company’s leadership team showed up to her store and presented her with flower, and a $1,000 donation to a local elementary school.

Best of all, that elderly woman has since come back to the store several times, and the two of them are becoming quite close. “What I’ve learned is so amazing—you can have an effect on people just by being yourself, working at the Dollar General,” she said.