8-Year-Old Girl Creates Charity Lemonade Franchises

Originally posted Saturday, July 17, 2010

Plenty of elementary school kids run lemonade stands during the summer. Few turn those lemonade stands into charitable franchises that help sick kids.

But 8-year-old Abby Enck found a way to use her refreshing entrepreneurial enterprise to bring some color into the life of her 6-year-old brother, Cameron, and his cohorts at Lutheran General Children's Hospital in Park Ridge. Cameron was born with Cerebral Palsy.

"It’s hard sometimes to have a sibling with a disability, but Abby is a really great sister," said Abby’s mother, Becki Enck. "I’m amazed by her everyday. She’s a very giving, thoughtful, gentle person."

Cameron was diagnosed with the disease when he was just one week old. Big sister Abby has accompanied him to almost all of his appointments and noticed that the kids at the hospital liked coloring.

So when Abby made $4.50 from selling delicious lemonade to neighborhood locals, she decided use the money to buy 36 boxes of crayons for Cameron and the other kids at the hospital.

"Cameron’s doctor loved it," Abby said. "I really like to color, and I thought the kids would love it too."

When 2010 rolled around, Abby thought she could best last year's donation. So rather than sling lemonade on her own, she created "lemonade kits" that consisted of a bottle of water, a packet of lemonade and a homemade tag that explained her goal. Abby made 52 kits and recruited family and friends to help sell them for $1 each.

The franchise idea turned out to be crayon boom-town, and Abby has been able to purchase 869 boxes of Crayola Crayons so far this year. She hopes to make it to her goal of 1,000 boxes in the next few weeks.

Officials at Lutheran General are thrilled.

"What's special about this donation is that she took it upon herself and made it personal," said Lutheran General's communications manager, Nate Llewellyn.

It doesn't hurt that the kids at Lutheran General love using the gifts.

"Coloring is a great creative outlet for kids," Llewellyn said. "It helps them work through any issues they may be going through and take their mind of metal or physical pain. It really creates a sense of home, safety and comfort for them."

Becki said Abby handled the whole operation herself. She created a to-do list, compiled a list of family and friends to whom she planned to reach, designed a company logo on the computer and came up with a slogan: "If life gives you lemons, COLOR!"

The whole experience has been good for Abby and Cameron.

"She used to be very shy, but this is really bringing her out of her shell," Becki said. "She wants to share and this is something exciting that she can be recognized for."

Abby says the best part about making the kits is buying and donating the crayons. When her mother asked what she had learned from the project, the 8-year-old replied, "Everybody can make a difference."

Abby will deliver the next batch of crayons to Lutheran General on July 25. In the meantime, she continues to be a supportive, caring sister.

"Whenever Cameron is having issues, she always says things will be okay," Becki said.

Cameron's treatments include a demanding set of therapy sessions that focus more on cognitive work than physical rehab. The sessions work to progress Cameron's developmental capabilities. The doctors and therapists at Lutheran General have taught Cameron to play with toys, try new things and sign words like "thank you," "more" and "please."

And Cameron continues to learn, with his sister always by his side.

"She really puts the saying, 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ into practice," Becki said. "She is always looking on the bright side."

The bright side for Cameron is that he'll join his sister in elementary school when he enters first grade next year. Abby will surely help him along the way. She says she wants to be a special education teacher.

"We are so proud of her, and we know that whatever she does, she’ll go onto great things," Becki said. "She’s just got a great compassion for people."

Abby already has big plans for next year. She's going to upgrade from handing out crayons to handing out DVDs. How refreshing!

To help Abby's cause, call Lutheran General Hospital at 847-723-7747 or send a check to :

Lutheran General Hospital Child Life Department, Room 205 Park Ridge, IL 60068

In-person donations (can be crayons or otherwise) can be left at the hospital's front desk, marked for Child Life.

Notes: Abby's story gained national attention after this article was picked up on Yahoo. Both Abby and Lutheran General Hospital received dozens of donations from readers wanting to contribute to her cause. Due to the overwhelming response, I spoke to Abby and Becki again and wrote a follow-up story on Abby's delivery to the hospital, which can be found below.

Lemonade Baroness Delivers on Crayon Promise

Originally posted Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Patients at Lutheran General Hospital are in for oodles of doodles thanks to an 8-year-old lemonade impresario.

Third grader Abby Enck spent much of her summer raising funds in order to purchase coloring supplies for the children at Lutheran General, where her brother receives treatment for Cerebral Palsy. She delivered a stockpile of crayons Sunday.

“The best part was seeing the smiles on the kid’s faces,” Abby said. “I got to take pictures with them and it was really fun.”

Abby, her mom, Becki, and her dad, Tim, made the rounds at the hospital, wheeling their load of supplies in three wheelchairs. Abby was able to make personal deliveries to the patients, asking each child if they’d like crayons, markers or pencils.

“They had the biggest smiles on their faces,” Becki said. “Something as simple as a box of crayons, and you could see that it just brought them so much joy.”

Becki said they received an overwhelming amount of donations, as did Lutheran General, and that alone made the whole thing worth it. In the process, Abby surpassed her goal of purchasing 1000 boxes of crayons with: 1,009 boxes of crayons, 140 boxes of markers and 125 boxes of colored pencils.

“Watching Abby made us realize how much the Child Life Program means, not only to patients, but especially to siblings who sometimes spend many, many hours at a hospital,” she said. “The days can get so long and yet the Child Life Staff are there and are always making sure that each and every child are being taken care of.”

Lutheran General staff said they have never received such a large donation of a single item, and are delighted that they’ll be stocked for a while.

Ever the entrepreneur, Abby now plans to write thank-you notes to each friend and family member that helped her sell her lemonade kits. And although she’s already planning next year’s fund raising venture -- DVDs and popcorn -- she plans on making the most of the summer.

“I’m going to play outside in our pool,” she said. “My brother and I like to play with Build-a-Bears and ride our bikes.”

In total, Abby raised $551 for Lutheran General, and Becki could not be more proud of her extraordinary third-grader.

“I think what Abby has taught everyone is that no matter who you are, young or old, you can make a difference,” she said. “Every little thing makes a difference.”

To help Abby’s cause, call Lutheran General Hospital at 847-723-7747 or send a check to: Lutheran General Hospital Child Life Department, Room 205, Park Ridge, IL 60068

In-person donations can be left at the hospital’s front desk, marked for Child Life.

Town's Only Reporter Just 12 Years Old

Originally posted Friday, June 25, 2010

Keith Davis gets all the scoops in his hometown of Annawan, Illinois.

“I keep my ears and eyes open, and if I hear about something going on, I see if it’s true,” he said. “If there are sirens going off, I try to figure out what it is.”

Davis doesn’t have a lot of competition. He’s the only newspaper reporter in the town of 900. And he’s just 12 years old.

Believe it or not, he’s a veteran. Davis started the The Annawan News three years ago, when he was just 9. Since then it has evolved into The Annawan Times, a weekly publication complete with a Web site and advertisements.

“We don’t have a paper in town, and the ones around us don’t really cover a lot of local news,” the seventh-grader said. “I had to start it so we can have that kind of news.”

This is no cow-poke journal, however. The Annawan Times is certified. Davis was recently granted entry into the Illinois Press Association, a distinction that puts him on the level with some of the most prestigious publications in the state.

It wasn’t easy. Davis petitioned the organization numerous times, but few people took the young reporter seriously, until his story made it to the upper echelons of the organization.

“Our executive director said that he was doing a really good thing and wanted to make him an honorary member,” said David Porter, communication and marketing director for the IPA. “He’s a great kid. A really great kid.”

After he was inducted Davis received a box full of IPA materials, including an IPA card and sticker and a letter notifying him of his acceptance. As an honorary member, Davis gets all the benefits of regular membership, without the responsibility of paying dues.

“I didn’t know if they would make me a member, but when they did, they gave me a bunch of stuff,” Keith said. “Press cards, notepads, pens, posters… I didn’t think I’d get all that.”

Full membership in the IPA requires an examination of the publication, making sure the paper meets legal requirements and other criteria such as content and length, but the IPA decided to give him a pass for now.

“We didn’t get to the point of examining the paper for qualifications,” Porter said. “We decided it didn’t matter. As long as he’s putting out legitimate news products, he should have the same privileges assigned to those credentials. We wanted to welcome him into our organization.”

Keith covers everything from sports to local news, but he is most passionate about weather, a section that is always included in the eight-page publication.

“I like winter stories,” Keith said. “My favorite one was about a snowstorm that happened on Christmas Day. It delayed all the holiday travels, and I got to report about it.”

Keith does all the reporting and editing himself, with occasional help from his friends.

“They help out sometimes, but they don’t enjoy it as much as I do,” Keith said. “So I do most of it by myself.”

After all, what other kid has the budding potential and enviable work ethic that Keith has? The seventh-grader works hard on his paper, getting up early in the mornings to update his site and picking up the published paper every week, even mailing copies to his three subscribers.

“I work on the content for a week’s paper the week before,” he said. “I get the order to the printer each Tuesday, so they’ll be ready to be sold every Thursday.”

The Annawan Times has advertisers for both the paper and the Web site, but Davis makes no money for his hard work.

“What he’s doing, this is the basics of what we do," Porter said. "And he’s been doing it for two years on a regular basis. I think that speaks for itself.”

Notes: This story gained national attention after being picked up on Yahoo. Keith was subsequently interviewed for other websites, news stations and radio shows and the Davis family was offered a reality show from a production company in L.A. and a free trip to Disney World.

Great Lakes Companies Offer Oil Cleanup Ideas

Originally posted Wednesday, July 7, 2010

They might be hundreds of miles removed from disaster, but a couple of Midwestern companies are among the many offering up ideas to help clean the oil-coated beaches of the Gulf Coast.

Among them is Gravely of Chicago, a mower company based in Lake Barrington. The company has sent a small crew to Pensacola, Fla., to demonstrate the contraption it claim helps clean debris and litter from beaches.

The Sand Cleaner is an attachment that hooks onto a two-wheel, self-propelled tractor. The device digs four inches into the ground, sifts the sand and separates any solids into a removable container.

"We’ve been showing the equipment to the Air Force in the area and to the Mayor of Louisiana," said Gravely's owner, Jill Halloran. "We’ll be down there for another week or so, traveling through Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida."

A 34-inch machine, Halloran says the equipment is perfect for tight areas and for cleaning the "tar balls" that wash up on the Gulf shores. The Sand Cleaner is capable of cleaning up to one acre of beach per hour, Halloran said.

Meanwhile, a knit pile fabric manufacturing company in Janesville, Wis., has come up with what may seem like an even simpler solution -- wool. Monterey Mills has produced the oil-absorbing fabric for years, and has posted a video to YouTube demonstrating its capabilities in hopes of gaining federal attention.

"We’re a very large company that specializes in industrial fabric manufacturing," said company president Daniel Sinykin. "We make the fabric on the end of paint rollers, a fabric that needs to absorb oil without absorbing water, which we think is a perfect solution to the oil spill."

Similar to their YouTube demonstration, Sinykin says the use of the fabric would be relatively simple. A patrol boat would pull the fabric across the water and reeled in when the captain felt the wool was fully saturated.

The 100 percent wool fabric can absorb seven times its weight, or around 30 pounds of oil per yard, Sinykin said. The company can produce enough of the fabric to salvage 20 miles of beachfront every day.

But the good news doesn’t end there, as Sinykin says there are many options for use of the wool after it's done its dirty work. The fabric could either be cleansed and reused or incinerated in a coal plant to generate energy. A third option, he claimed, is to leave the biodegradable product to decompose and restore oil to the soil, which BP could then reclaim.

It took months to get BP's attention, but the oil company finally contacted Monterey Mills in July for a demonstration. Sinykin met BP representatives in a special meeting July 7 in Pensacola to test their product.

"We feel terrible for all the people being affected down there," Sinykin said. "Anyone that has the capacity to help should be using all the resources that they can. That’s what we want to do."

Chicagoan Stakes Claim to First Robot Wedding

Originally posted Saturday, May 22, 2010

Something didn't compute when Chicagoan Ben Stone heard about the first-ever robot wedding taking place in Japan this week.

"This is not true," Stone, a Chicago artist, said. "I, a native Chicagoan, built a robot to conduct my wedding in 2004."

Stone's got the video to prove his marriage to Amy Stone was performed by the Nuptron 4000.

Admittedly, Nuptron 3000 wasn't as high tech as the I-FAIRY robot that performed a ceremony this week in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo.

I-FAIRY was created by Japanese company Kokoro. Circuits was built by Stone -- who has no robotics or electrical experience.

“I’m an artist, so I tried to think about how to incorporate what I do into such a life changing event,” said Stone, who teaches art at Northern Illinois University. “Neither of us are particularly religious and the idea of having a complete stranger wed us seemed sort of odd.”

The eight-foot robot took nearly three months to build and was equipped with a pre-programmed sermon and manually-operated controls.

All this probably sounds way cool to the geekier set, but how did Stone’s then-fiancé feel about the less-than-traditional ceremony?

“Amy thought it was great,” Stone said. “Unconventional ideas appeal to her and we wanted to do something unique.”

The rest of his wedding party thought it was great, too. And they found the robot pastor surprisingly reverent.

“The speech we chose for him to say was actually not comedic at all,” said Stone. “I mean, the event itself was a spectacle, so it was naturally funny, but what he said was very truthful and touching.”

Stone hasn’t built a robot since, but says he recommissioned the Nuptron 4000 as Bernie Circuits, a hack stand-up comedian.

Six years later, both he and Amy hold fond memories of their robot wedding, and think it was a success.

“Actually, my grandmother said it was the first wedding she heard every single word of,” Stone said. “The robot’s speech was out on the loudspeakers. It was great.”

Street Polls

Each week, I took a camera out to the streets of Chicago to interview locals about the hot topic for that week. Topics ranged anywhere from the Rod Blagojevich trial to the BP oil spill.
To view each poll, click on the links below.





Poll: Are the Blackhawks for Real?

Poll: What are You Doing for Memorial Day?

Poll: How will Blago Fare?

Poll: Will LeBron Come to Chicago?

Poll: Are You Boycotting BP?

Poll: Are You a Taste of Chicago Fan?

Poll: What are you Doing for July 4th?

Hate Index: How Do You Feel About LeBron?

Poll: How Honest is Chicago?

Poll: Should Blago Have Brought his Kids to Court?

Mug Shots Gallery

NBC Chicago's Mug Shots Gallery is a constantly running slide show that is continually updated with the area's latest mug shots. As police releases came in, I took the attached images, edited them with photo software, and added them to the gallery with information about the appropriate crimes and arrests. I managed the gallery throughout my 12 weeks at the internship.

View mug shots gallery here.