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Secret Santa makes a difference

What would you do if somebody walked up to you, handed you a $100 bill, and then walked away? Feel pretty lucky, I imagine. Until earlier this week, I probably would have agreed with you. But it turns out the guy who handed you the money is really the lucky one.

On Monday Kevin Tibbles and I were fortunate enough to meet a Kansas City businessman by the name of Larry Stewart. Stewart has made millions in telecommunications over the years, but there was time when he wasn't so fortunate. He's the subject of our "Making a Difference" story tonight.

Once homeless and hungry himself, $20 from a diner owner changed the course of his whole life. He vowed if he was ever in a position to do the same for others he would. Eight years later, Stewart was having a tough time once again. He lost his job just weeks before Christmas. Even though he only had $600 in his bank account, he took out $200 in $10s and $20s and started handing them out to people. Kansas City's Secret Santa was born... and Larry Stewart's luck started to turn around. By January he had his job back. Three years later Stewart was a millionaire and Secret Santa switched to $100 bills. Since then he's handed out more than $1.3 million. Handing out $100s to strangers was Stewart's Christmas gift to himself every year.

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Dumb luck & oysters

I couldn’t agree more with Al’s entry about discovery journalism. It’s probably the main reason I’ve found this week to be so rewarding.  But I would like to add one anecdote to help illustrate his point.

I’ve spent a good part of my week traveling ahead of the team trying to get a general feel for the themes we should try to focus on in the next day’s story.  On Wednesday I left the team in Forked Island, La. and started heading east. Al had told us there were a lot of oyster fishermen who lived in the area and Carl agreed it might be a good opportunity to focus on the storm’s effects on the seafood industry. Other than that my marching orders were fairly vague and I set out to see what I could find.

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Losing everything

While the rest of our team spent most of their day in Vermilion Parish on Wednesday, I spent a good portion of mine in Terrebonne Parish.  I was working my way down Highway 315 talking to the oyster, shrimp and crab fisherman who live along the bayou in preparation for Thursday’s story.

I came upon a couple - a retired fisherman and his wife - who were cleaning their front yard.  We chatted for a few minutes.  It was a fairly normal conversation, at least as normal as any conversation between a Midwestern kid from the suburbs and two Cajuns whose home sits on stilts can possibly be. They hadn’t lost much, but then the woman informed me that their daughter…

"…she lost everything."

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The drip, drip, drip of progress

Both times I've returned home to Chicago from New Orleans since Katrina I've told people that the devastation is so much worse than it looks on television. When I return home after this trip, I'll surely be telling people that there is SO MUCH MORE devastation than you ever see on television.  It's mind boggling to think that after three days we still haven't even seen any damage caused by Katrina, only Rita.

As you drive across the Gulf Coast one thing that's striking is how much work is being done, yet how little progress seems to have been made. I don't mean that as a slight to the thousands of workers I've seen from all over the country - they're away from their families, working 18 hour days, living in motel rooms if they're lucky, RVs or tents if they're not. It's just that the job is so massive, it's almost like trying to move a boulder by dripping water on it.

But there are small signs of a divot in that boulder.Yesterday I left Cameron Parish to scout ahead for today's story.  Driving through the heart of Cajun Country I saw literally thousands of brand new power line poles - the wood so fresh it was still green - dotting the wreckage of small towns along Highway 82.  In many places these poles were the only thing standing.

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