Lana Brooks 
In 2018, the orca Tahlequah (J35) carried her dead calf for 17 days. Now researchers have spotted her with a newborn son, J65, swimming, socializing and nursing. It is hopeful news for the endangered Southern Resident killer whales.
ABC reporter Will Murray was filming flash flooding north of Brisbane when a ute drove into deep water and began to sink. He handed his phone to his camera operator, swam out with bystander Daniel Hainey, and pulled the driver free seconds before the car vanished.
Two barn owlets were found on the ground in a Michigan yard in August, the first known in the state in more than 40 years. One had died. The other was nursed back to health at Wildside in Eaton Rapids, trained by a falconer, banded and set free.
Kahri Salyars was proud of losing 40 pounds, until her TikTok video drew a month of cruel comments. Then a flood of kindness buried the hate. The people behind it were Tyler Brickley’s secret, half-million-strong Kindness Mob.
A spring freeze and a dry summer left Colorado’s black bears short on food. Now 70-year-old Nanci Limbach and her tiny team in Silt are fattening up more than 30 orphaned and underweight cubs, with donated peaches, apples and even carved Halloween pumpkins.
Musician Cash Jacobs, who has stage 3 breast cancer, posted a video asking Miley Cyrus to shave her head before chemo. She didn’t meet her idol at the first Hollywood Bowl show. Then Cyrus flew her back for the second one and picked up the clippers herself.
Rascal, an American Bully, spent more than 300 days at the Humane Society of Northeast Georgia, becoming its longest-stay resident. When a new dad finally adopted him, he brought a step stool from home to help Rascal into the car, and millions of viewers fell in love.
Ebro Ahmed, 27, was kicking a soccer ball outside his family’s St. Paul corner store when a school bus rolled by with its door open and the driver in a medical emergency. He sprinted, jumped aboard and stopped it in under 15 seconds. Days later, Superman showed up with a $1,000 check.
Orphaned baby elephants Kaikai and Bungalu spun around, flapped their ears and trumpeted with joy when their favorite keeper, Joseph, came back to Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s Kaluku unit. Here is how one lost her mother as a newborn and the other survived lions, hunger and a storm alone.
Ocean Silva, 21, flew from Boston to Honolulu to give his mother Lisa one of his kidneys so she would not have to wait years on a donor list. Two decades earlier, she had prayed beside his hospital bed when he nearly died as a newborn. After surgery, doctors said the kidney worked immediately.