Michael Tynan

Many homeless people regularly receive tickets and fines for infractions such as sleeping in the park, panhandling or urinating in public. These fines add up and create a financial burden. It is especially frustrating to the homeless, particularly those who are trying to get off the streets and turn their lives around.

Enter Judge Michael Tynan, a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge who recognized this problem. Tynan found out about a pilot program in San Diego, where Judge Leo Valentine had started a so-called "Homeless Court" in 1999. Judge Valentine's unconventional court was a place where homeless veterans could have minor, nonviolent infractions erased from their records.

Judge Tynan fought to bring a homeless court to Los Angeles County. He succeeded, and in November, 2000, the first homeless court was held on the streets of skid row, an area of Los Angeles known for its large street population. Judge Tynan literally takes his courtroom to the streets, holding sessions on street corners and in homeless shelters.

There are strict requirements as to who is eligible to get their charges cleared in homeless court. Persons wishing to erase infractions must have been enrolled in a rehabilitative program for at least three months and their citations must be at least six months old. Citations cannot be felonies or serious misdemeanors. Charges involving a victim, weapon or drugs are not eligible to be erased through homeless court.

Homeless persons served by this program are granted pro-bono legal services by schools such as the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, Pepperdine University and Loyola Marymount University. An organization called Public Counsel coordinates the legal services.

Judge Tynan's will to help the homeless of Los Angeles County has helped make a difference for countless homeless men and women who were ready to change their way of life.

Brandon Keefe

In 1993, 8-year-old Brandon Keefe sat in a corner at the Hollygrove Children’s Home, waiting for his mother to finish talking. He was bored, playing his Game Boy, but half-listening, and so he heard that Hollygrove Home needed a library but didn't have any resources. All they had was an empty space and lots of kids without books.

The next day, when Brandon’s teacher asked the students to come up with ideas for a community service project, Brandon recalled his mother's conversation at the Hollygrove Home. There was a problem that needed to be solved. An idea occurred to him at once. What about all the books he had read and outgrown? He had many that he was too old for, and knew his friends had some too. What if they gave them to Hollygrove to create a library?

Brandon initiated a book drive, and soon he had 847 books spread out on his bedroom floor. An organization of retired librarians volunteered to catalogue them. A Rotary Club donated shelves, tables and chairs. The big empty room at Hollygrove was filled, and every orphan had a book to take to bed at night.

When Brandon entered 7th grade at Chaminade Middle School, he again suggested a book drive for a community service project. He got his friends involved and they spread the word with posters and announcements at school, and flyers attached to paper bags ready to be filled. In one week, the school collected 5,000 books. The orphanage library couldn’t handle them all, so the remaining books went to Limerick Elementary.

A local public school, Limerick Elementary, had pine cones instead of books on their library shelves. They became the next new library created by Brandon and his friends. The principal realized that Brandon’s idea was so simple and effective, that she began sharing it throughout the Los Angeles school district.

Brandon was surprised when, one day, a photographer from the Los Angeles Times called him out of class. He was featured in the newspaper, which led to some local community service awards. Then he was invited to appear on "Oprah."

"Because of the media attention, people started calling, asking how to run a book drive, donating money. Being on 'Oprah' gave us credibility for setting up a non-profit organization, BookEnds. Corporations gave us donations to buy books that we couldn’t collect, the ones everybody wants that don’t get given away as much. And we could take it all to the next level."

By 2001, the 60,000 volunteers had collected around 150,000 volumes for BookEnds. They had completed 46 libraries, with 32 more under development. They estimate that they have helped more than 40,000 children who didn’t have books before. Brandon explains, "These libraries are in schools, youth organizations, after-school clubs, anywhere there’s a system already in place where the books will be used. It wouldn't be good to have the campaign and collect the books only to have them sit in boxes."

Brandon says, "My heroes are the ones who understand there's a need and really take action to eradicate the problem instead of just sitting back and thinking about it. It's one thing to put a quarter in a box for Africa and another to deliver something to someone in need."

http://www.bookends.org

Lance Armstrong

Armstrong began his sporting career as a triathlete competing and winning in adult competitions from age 12. At 16 years old, Armstrong became a professional triathlete and became the national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990 at age 18 and 19, respectively. It soon became clear that his greatest talent was as a bicycle racer after competing as a cycling amateur, winning the U.S. amateur championship in 1991 and finishing 14th in the 1992 Summer Olympics. In 1993, Armstrong finished the year ranked number one by capturing 10 one-day events and stage races, including becoming the youngest rider to win the world road race championship, his first stage win at the Tour de France, and collecting the Thrift Drug "Triple Crown of Cycling".

On October 2, 1996, Armstrong was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer. Since there was a late diagnosis, the cancer had grown, spreading to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. Armstrong chose to undergo a more dangerous chemotherapy because, if he survived, it would allow him to resume his career. His doctors told him that he had less than a 50% chance of living. After his recovery, one of his doctors told him that his actual odds of living had been considered to be smaller, around 3%, and that he had been given the estimate primarily to give him hope. Three years later he went on to win his first Tour de France title.

Armstrong's cycling comeback began in 1999 with his first Tour de France win, which included 4 stage wins. He went on to win 7 consecutive Tour de France titles.

Retired from cycling Armstrong focuses his efforts on the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that inspires and empowers people with cancer. The Lance Armstrong Foundation has granted more than $9.6 million toward cancer survivorship and testicular cancer research, more than $1.7 million invested in the development of 5 comprehensive cancer survivorship centers across the country, nearly $1.6 million invested in survivorship education and outreach initiatives with 60+ national and regional community partners including Fertile Hope, CancerCare, the Office of Native Cancer Survivorship, and the National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship, and more than $2 million invested in 104 Community Program Partner initiatives that provide direct support and education to people living with cancer.

Armstrong completed the 2006 New York City Marathon in 2:59:36 and raised $600,000 for his LiveStrong campaign during the run. On February 12, 2007, Armstrong officially announced his decision to enter the 2007 New York City Marathon.

http://www.livestrong.org

Morris Dees

Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. was born in 1936 in Shorter, Alabama, the son of farmers. Dees attended undergraduate school at the University of Alabama where he founded a nationwide direct mail sales company that specialized in book publishing. After graduation from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1960, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama's capital, and opened a law office.

He continued his mail order and book publishing business, Fuller & Dees Marketing Group, which grew to be one of the largest publishing companies in the South. In recognition of his publishing work and his efforts to encourage young people to become active in the business world, Dees was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of America in 1966 by the U. S. Jaycees.

In 1967, after a night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport, Dees decided to leave his safe, business-as-usual world and undertake a new mission. "When my plane landed in Chicago, I was ready to take that step, to speak out for my black friends who were still 'disenfranchised' even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I had made up my mind. I would sell the company as soon as possible and specialize in civil rights law," Dees said. "All the things in my life that had brought me to this point, all the pulls and tugs of my conscience, found a singular peace. It did not matter what my neighbors would think, or the judges, the bankers, or even my relatives." Out of this deeply personal moment grew the Southern Poverty Law Center.

After his epiphany in 1967, Dees began taking controversial cases that were highly unpopular in the white community. He filed suit to stop construction of a white university in an Alabama city that already had a predominantly black state college. In 1969, he filed suit to integrate the all-white Montgomery YMCA. As he continued to pursue equal opportunities for minorities and the poor, Dees and his law partner Joseph J. Levin, Jr. saw the need for a non-profit organization dedicated to seeking justice. In 1971, the two lawyers and civil rights activist Julian Bond founded the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Dees is chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center. In his pioneering role at the Center, Dees participates in suing hate groups and mapping new directions for the Center.
In addition to his work for the Center, Dees frequently speaks to colleges and universities, legal associations and other groups throughout the country. Over the years, he has been awarded at least 25 honorary degrees. In 2001, the National Education Association selected Dees as recipient of its Friend of Education Award, its highest award, for his "exemplary contributions to education, tolerance and civil rights."

http://www.splcenter.org

Bill Gates

Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. When he was 13, computers were still encompassing whole rooms, but it was also the year Gates made his first computer program. With future Microsoft partner Paul Allen, Gates built a scheduling program for his school that created the times and occupants of each class period, mysteriously placing the two young men in the same classes as the pretty girls. Later on, while studying law with intentions of becoming a lawyer like his father, he attended Harvard University. In his junior year he left Harvard to devote all of his time and energy to his software business.

By the late 1980’s, Gates and Allen were producing programs like Microsoft Word and Excel, and when the company went public in 1986, Gates became a 31-year-old billionaire. By the early 1990’s, they had versions of Windows. They were selling 1 million copies a month by 1993 and, with the release of Windows ’95 in August of that year, they sold 7 million copies in the first six months. The company was then put in the limelight when the US Justice Department started to fight legal battles with the company because of their mysterious, but completely honest, uprise and fortune.

For a man who worked tirelessly for years, Gates began to focus on other aspects of his life beginning in the 1990s. In 1994, he married Melinda French. The couple has three children together. They also established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, which works on global health and education issues. Time magazine named the couple—along with singer Bono—as its Persons of Year in 2005 for their charitable efforts. Gates announced in 2006 that he would be stepping away from the day-to-day operations of Microsoft to spend more time on the foundation's projects and causes. He has the record for the largest single donation ever made by a living individual--$6 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable organization.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org

Alice Waters

Chef Alice Waters is the founder of Chez Panisse, a Berkeley restaurant that has been named the"The Best Restaurant in America" by both the James Beard Foundation and by Gourmet magazine. Since it opened in 1971, the fixed-price menus offered nightly at Chez Panisse have been created in accordance with the principles of sustainable agriculture - using only fresh ingredients, harvested in season, and purchased from local farmers.

In 1996, the Edible Schoolyard Project became Waters' new passion. The project began at the Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley with the idea of transforming some land near the school into a garden and, in the process, to teach local school children about food and agriculture, to reacquaint them with the land.

"I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land...to know how to nourish themselves...and to know how to connect with the community around them," says Waters. The middle school students cultivate and harvest the crops, and the cafeteria buys and prepares the produce for school lunches. Waters hopes that this program will teach kids to value fresh food and value their own contributions that will bring it to the table. Eventually, she also hopes that the Edible Schoolyard will inspire a national change in school curricula. Already, other middle and high schools in California and Ohio have launched similar projects.

Alice Waters' activities and philosophy for change have been nationally recognized. In 1997, she received the Humanitarian Award from the James Beard Foundation. In 1999, the United States Department of Education Secretary, Richard Riley, honored her with a John H. Stanford "Education Hero" award.

http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/

Mark Twight

Mark Twight rose to prominence in the world Alpine mountaineering community in the late '80s and early '90s with a well-documented series of difficult, dangerous alpine climbs in various ranges around the world, perhaps most notably in the Mont Blanc massif outside of Chamonix, France.

Mark Twight is also the founder of Gym Jones, where he trains athletes and professionals for whom fitness can mean the difference between life and death. His fitness regimens are extreme by any standard, and based on real-world functionality as opposed to just having a pretty set of biceps. Recently, the cast of the movie "300" trained in Gym Jones to attain the physiques of Spartan warriors.

It is the attitude expressed in the writing of Twight that lands him on my living hero list. He encompasses everything in the "Mastery" quote by Stuart Emory - while wrapping it in barbed-wire and pulling no punches:

"Why should your words mean anything? They aren't learned by heart and written in blood. If you cannot grasp the consciousness-altering experience that real mastery of these disciplines proposes, of what value is your participation? The truth is pointless when it is shallow. Do you have the courage to live with the integrity that stabs deep?

Use the mirror to cut to the heart of things and uncover your true self. Use the razor to cut away what you don't need. The life you want to live has no recipe. Following the recipe got you here in the first place: Mix one high school diploma with an undergrad degree and a college sweetheart. With a whisk (or a whip) blend two cars, a poorly built house in a cul de sac, and fifty hours a week working for a board that doesn't give a shit about you. Reproduce once. Then again. Place all ingredients in a rut, or a grave. One is a bit longer than the other. Bake thoroughly until the resulting life is set. Rigid. With no way out. Serve and enjoy.

But there is a way out. Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante bullshit of doing a lot of different things (and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without casuistry, the responsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions."


http://www.gymjones.com