The week's good news: March 22, 2018

(Image credit: Michael Burrell / Alamy Stock Photo)

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1. Georgette the rescued lamb makes herself at home with Montana couple
2. Gas station clerk tracks down customer who dropped lottery ticket worth $1 million
3. College students, patients with dementia bond during spring break volunteer trip
4. Off-duty New York firefighter rescues neighbors from burning building
5. Chick-fil-A cashier saved regular customer's change for weeks after he left it behind

published 22 March 2018

1. Georgette the rescued lamb makes herself at home with Montana couple

They thought their child-rearing days were long over, but then along came Georgette. Arnie Skoog, 89, and his wife Ginger, 84, live in Great Falls, Montana. A few weeks ago, their son Jay stopped by their house, carrying a lamb that had been rejected by its mother and was less than a week old. Left in the snow, she had frostbite and was in bad shape, but once she entered the Skoog home, "she was soon on her feet and eating everything in the house," Ginger told the Great Falls Tribune. Georgette — named after Curious George — loves Arnie, and sits on his lap while he watches television and bleats whenever he leaves the room. She's also "naughty," Ginger said. "If you say, 'Don't do that,' she'll grab a piece of it and run." When the weather warms up, Georgette will go back to Jay's farm, where she will live in a barn.

After a man accidentally dropped a lottery ticket worth $1 million at a gas station in Salina, Kansas, an employee ensured that the winning ticket made it back to the right hands. The ticket was actually purchased in Lincoln, Kansas, but while stopped at the Salina gas station, the winner's brother held the ticket in his hand, then dropped it. After spotting it when the brothers were gone, employees picked up the ticket and scanned it, discovering it was worth $1 million. It wasn't signed, and any one of the employees could have claimed it as their own, but they waited to see if the men would return, and when they came back a few hours later, the ticket was turned over to the rightful owner. "It's just nice to know there are still good Samaritans around," Lincoln resident Shelly Thomas told KWCH. "Not just pure greed."

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Several students from the University of Miami decided to have a different kind of spring break, leaving the beach for Colorado, where they volunteered for a week at the Chelsea Place memory care facility. The students spent their days in Aurora getting to know the residents, who have dementia. They ate lunch together, shared stories, and at the end of the week, split up into pairs and created paintings that represented their experience, with the artwork then placed in a small gallery set up by the facility staff. Junior Amanda Lorenzo told CBS Denver spending the week getting to know the residents of Chelsea Place was unforgettable. "They have had more of an impact on me than I would have realized and I'm so thankful that I came on this trip," she said.

While walking home from the subway last Thursday, firefighter Roben Duge saw black smoke billowing from his neighbor's two-story house, and although he was off-duty and didn't have his gear on him, Duge ran into the flames to save a family. "I'm not a hero, I'm just reacting off instinct," the father of three told the New York Daily News. "When I heard the kids screaming, it hit home." Duge, a resident of Jamaica, Queens, has been with the FDNY for five years, and was able to get a grandmother and her two grandchildren out of the building safely. He brought the trio over to his house, where they were treated by paramedics. His neighbors praised him for his bravery, but Duge's wife, Crystal, wasn't surprised by his act of heroism. "It's just who he is," she said. "He's Superman."

When customer Danny Cadra drove away from a Chick-fil-A in Lubbock, Texas, without his $3 in change, cashier Marcus Henderson stuffed it into an envelope, knowing the regular would be back sometime soon. For three weeks, Henderson carried the envelope in his back pocket while at work, never knowing if that would be the day he saw Cadra. He could have put it back in the cash register, but Henderson wanted to ensure Cadra received what was rightfully his. When Cadra came back to the restaurant last week, Henderson handed him the envelope, much to his surprise — he said he didn't even realize he left the change behind. "What a breath of fresh air," Cadra told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. "It meant that much to him, it meant even that much more to me."

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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.