A new home for Sandhya Thakur, and more

A new home for Sandhya Thakur

Seven-year-old Sandhya Thakur is finally getting a new family. A year ago the building where she lived in Mumbai suddenly collapsed, killing more than 70 people, including the girl’s entire family. She spent the next 23 days in a hospital under the care of senior nurse Veena Kadle. “I felt an instant affection for the girl,” said Kadle, and since Sandhya’s release she and her husband, who are childless, have been battling India’s bureaucracy for permission to adopt her. Last week they finally won. “Now our family is complete,” said Kadle’s mother-in-law.

Greg Novak’s 50-foot snowman

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When this brutal winter’s snowdrifts threatened to bury Minnesota farmer Greg Novak’s greenhouses, he started digging out like everyone else. Then he thought: Why not build a really massive snowman? “As long as you’re moving it, might as well do something practical with it,” he said. It took skid loaders, a silage blower, and hundreds of hours of work, but people are traveling from miles away to see the giant, 50-foot figure Novak calls Granddaddy. Novak is unfazed by those questioning his sanity. “It puts a smile on people’s faces,” he said. “When people smile, you know you’ve done a good thing.”

A reunion 58 years later

This spring, Mary Ellen Suey will finally meet the man who rescued her as an abandoned infant in an Indiana field 58 years ago. Dave Hickman was 14 then and out hunting squirrels with his grandfather when they heard the infant cooing. They whisked her to a hospital and she was quickly adopted, but Hickman has always wondered about her fate. Late last year he contacted retired county Sheriff John Catey, who tracked her down in California. On the phone, Hickman and Suey felt an immediate bond. “It’s almost as if she was my baby,” said Hickman, who will see her again in May.