The week's good news: October 5, 2017

(Image credit: Facebook/Children's Healthcare of Atlanta)

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1. Retiree spends his days as the 'ICU Grandpa,' holding preemies and helping parents
2. NYC teens' radio club helps relay messages to and from Puerto Rico
3. Mystery couple in Pennsylvania surprises diners by picking up their tabs
4. Childhood cancer survivor becomes a nurse at the same hospital that treated her
5. 60 years after the ceremony, couple finally takes their wedding photos

published 5 October 2017

1. Retiree spends his days as the 'ICU Grandpa,' holding preemies and helping parents

Two days a week, David Deutchman goes by a different name: ICU Grandpa. The retired international marketing executive volunteers at the intensive care unit at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta hospital, holding babies and helping their parents in any way he can. For babies in the NICU, being cuddled helps them, nurse Elizabeth Mittiga told CNN, because they feel "that comfort, that warmth." She said she believes they "grow faster and put more weight on." Not every case has the best outcome, but Deutchman said he'd never give up the experience of bonding with these tiny patients. "The good times have been spending six months with a family, and the kid had ups and downs, and the kid came out great," he told CNN. "Now the kid is 4 or 5 years old and is terrific. Those are the stories I love."

Most of Puerto Rico is still without power following Hurricane Maria, so it's difficult for people to communicate with friends and family off the island, but some radio-loving New York City teenagers are using their skills to pass along messages. Members of the amateur radio club at the Garden School in Queens are receiving emails, then turning them into 25-word "radiograms," or messages, and sending them to Puerto Rico. Messages are also being sent back from Puerto Rico to the Garden School. Senior Lea Medina has enjoyed doing her part to help with relief efforts. "There is not a better feeling than being able to make someone smile, or make sure that they feel safe," she told DNA Info.

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Diners that walk into the Applebee's in Washington, Pennsylvania, never know if they're going to have to pay for their meal or if an anonymous couple will grab the check. The mystery husband and wife eat in the bar several times a week, and a few times a month, they pick up the tab of an unsuspecting family or party. Jodie Welling was celebrating her daughter's birthday with 14 others, and when she asked for the check, she was told by server Samantha Powell it had already been paid. "I was almost in tears," Powell told CBS Pittsburgh. "It touches me, too. They were just so surprised." Management does know that the couple owns a local business and has paid for other diners for several years. "He always says, 'I grew up poor and now I'm not,' and that's all he says," Powell said.

Montana Brown will never forget how compassionate the nurses at AFLAC Cancer Center in Atlanta were when she was a patient there, and as the hospital's newest pediatric oncology nurse, she's ready to follow in their footsteps. Brown, 24, battled cancer twice as a child — at age 2, doctors found out she had rhadbomysarcoma, a rare type of childhood cancer that affects the connective tissue, and Brown had to undergo chemotherapy for a year, and at 15, she was diagnosed with cancer again. Both times, the nurses were there for her, helping make the hospital less scary. "The love they showed me and my family in our time of need just really helped me," she told ABC News. "It helped me want to become as kind and as caring and as compassionate as they were for me."

They didn't have a lot of money when they got married in 1957, so Rosa and Russo Dias had a simple ceremony without a professional photographer. When photographer David Balatonfuredi of São Paulo Fotografia heard about the couple, who live in Cordeirópolis, Brazil, he decided to put together the photo session that never happened. He got other vendors involved — a dress was donated to Rosa, a suit to Russo — and it cost the Dias family nothing. "Many, many times a marriage does not last this long, most times not even close to it, so it was pretty clear they were a very special couple," Balatonfuredi told HuffPost. Rosa and Russo have nine children, 16 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, and some of them were on hand for the photo shoot, where the couple posed hand-in-hand under twinkle lights and on a swing.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.