1 . Nicole Salgado and and her family woke up on New Year’s Day to panic knocking at the front door of their home in Avodale, Arizona. Her house was on fire, but she didn’t know it. “We were all ________,” Salgado said. “Then all of a sudden around 7:30 in the morning, we heard banging on our door and our doorbell was ________. And we kind of got ________.”

Salgado, a mother of four, ran to ________ the kids while her husband hurried to the front door. There, they found their next-door neighbour, Carolyn Palisch, urging the family to leave the house. He opened the door and their neighbour Carolyn said their house was on fire and told them to leave. Salgado ________ grabbed her kids and ________ from the burning home. No one was wearing socks or shoes ________ her oldest child.

Making sure that everyone was out, they realized the full extent of it. They were just in ________ as they watched their home burn. According to Salgado, minutes after they escaped, the ________ collapsed and smoke filled the inside of their home. ________ said if the family had still been sleeping when the roof fell down, they would have breathed the smoke and immediately ________.

“We are so grateful to just be ________,” Salgado wrote in a post to social media. The doorbell camera caught the moment when Palisch saved their lives. Salgado said the family decided to post the video to share with the world what Palisch did for them. The video has now been ________ almost 7 million times on Tiktok.

In the footage (一段镜头), Palisch is seen yelling outside the Salgado family’s door, surrounded by smoke and ________. She ________ to knock at the door loudly and repeatedly until she is able to help the family escape. “If it weren’t for her, it would be a totally different story,” said Salgado. “We feel so thankful to her. She saved all of us.”

Mark was a boy admired by his classmates and friends. He was happy, confident, brave, social, and had good school performance. But when Mark was ten years old, all this changed.

During that year, Mark met with an accident, and his left leg got terribly injured. After recovery, he could no longer walk normally like before though he didn’t need the crutches (拐杖), which made him sad and hopeless. Worried about Mark’s situation, his parents tried to entertain him and cheer him up.

On a cool Saturday morning in summer, Mark’s mother, Nicole, wondered how to entertain and encourage him. Suddenly she remembered Mark had said he wanted to learn to row a boat. Mark said it before the car accident. But after the disaster, Mark never mentioned it again. Wondering whether Mark still liked it, Nicole asked. But Mark just replied, “No, Mom!” He was thinking to himself, “With this disabled (残疾的) leg, I could do nothing. I’ll be a loser for the rest of my life.” But Nicole kept telling him that it would be fun and easy for him to row a boat under her guidance. Not wanting to disappoint his mom, Mark finally decided to give it a try, but didn’t hold any hope. Then he and his mom set off for a lake.

Mark was a little anxious all the way because it was his first time that he had rowed a boat. Nicole tried to comfort him. After about an hour of driving, they arrived at the lake. There were already many people who came for entertainment. Some were driving boats on the lake. And some were fishing. There were also some people doing exercise, running around the lake.

After parking the car, Nicole came to a building with Mark. There Nicole rented a small boat driven by oars (桨). After putting on life jackets, Nicole and Mark headed to the boat stopping by the lake. A worker showed them the boat they had rented.

Nicole first stepped onto the boat.

Observing his mother, Mark also took an oar, trying rowing the boat.

6 . John Utsey went hiking with his two children one Saturday in August. While strolling along a trail (小路) in New Mexico’s Santa Fe National Forest, they heard someone calling out. About 600 yards away, they found a man ______ on the ground. He had spent 14 days waiting for ______ to arrive.

Two weeks earlier, the man ______ his back in the forest. Unable to stand or walk, he had to wait and hope ______ hikers would find him. As more days passed, he ______ by filling a water bottle from a stream by his side. When John found him, it was ______ that he wouldn’t be able to ______ for much longer.

After giving him all their food and water, John and his kids ______ back to the trailhead. The moment they had reception, John called 911. When the rescuers arrived, he ______ them straight to the ______ .

Because the man was in such bad ______ they built a fire to raise his body temperature before they tried to ______ him. The rescue team carried the man back down the trail. After nine long hours, he was ______ out of the woods!

Now, he’s getting the best ______ possible at a local hospital, where he can rest ______ and hopefully make a full recovery.

7 . While driving home after work, Jane Hodgson noticed a car pulled over at the side of the road and a crowd beginning to gather around someone who was lying on the ground.

Jane, who had completed a first aid at work course, pulled over to see if she could offer any help — and it turned out to be lucky for the young injured girl that she did.

Describing the scene she came across, Jane says: “The onlookers were ashen-faced and looking lost. They were so shocked that they hadn’t even thought to call for an ambulance yet.”

After speaking to the emergency services, Jane started finding out what had happened and what injuries the young girl called Jenny had. The girl had been hit by a car and gone over the handlebars of her bike, landing on her head and shoulder. Her shoulder and arm were twisted (扭曲) underneath her.

“She hadn’t been wearing a helmet (头盔) when she got knocked down, and I thought that she should not be moved as I couldn’t be sure about a spinal injury (脊椎损伤), but after looking her over and checking the circulation in her injured arm I did feel fairly confident that she had escaped relatively unhurt.

“As we were waiting for an ambulance, the amount of pain the girl was in was increasing. To distract (分散注意力) her and minimize the risk of her going into shock I kept her talking. She held my hand tightly when the pain got too much and this helped. I told her I could handle it — we laughed about that,” describes Jane.

Later, a doctor from the local hospital’s ICU stopped at the scene too. The ICU doctor decided that Jenny should lie on her back, making her much more comfortable until the emergency services arrived.

Thinking back, Jane says: “For me, knowing that in a small way I helped that girl through what was a frightening experience is all the reward I need. I felt great to know I’d made a difference and I’d do it again.”