Making a comeback

Thumbs-up to Shellie McCulley, coordinator for Special Olympics-Jackson County, and the county management team for their efforts to reorganize the non-for-profit organization. The team plans to have a callout meeting for interested athletes and volunteers sometime in January to let them know all about Special Olympics and what can be offered locally.

Singing along

Thumbs-up to the four local youth picked to the sing with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. They are Seymour Middle School eighth-grader Emma Nowling; Isabel Lubia, a sixth-grader at Sandy Creek Christian Academy; freshman Marci Lichtley, who is part of a homeschool organization; and first-grader Lafe Bowers, who also is part of a homeschool organization.

Soaring with the eagles

Thumbs-up to Riley Bartells of Seymour for planning and organizing a blood drive through the Indiana Blood Center on Dec. 7 at Trinity Lutheran High School. The 17-year-old junior, who is a member of Boy Scout Troop 526 at St. Ambrose Catholic Church, came up with the idea for the blood drive to serve as his Eagle Scout project. The need for blood is always greater during the holidays but even more so this year with the mass shooting Oct. 1 that left 58 people dead in Las Vegas and hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, and that’s the reason Bartells put the blood drive together.

Reunited

Thumbs-up to the Good Samaritan who found Cali along U.S. 31 between Seymour and Columbus and took the chocolate Labrador retriever to Linda Jackson after about a month. Jackson, who lives between Brownstown and Seymour and has been rescuing cats and dogs for six years, also deserves a thumbs-up for taking Cali to a local veterinarian. That vet was able to use a microchip embedded in the dog, who had been missing for five years, to find and reunite her with her owners, Jan and Betty Finke, who live in the Walesboro area.

Medora royalty

Thumbs-up to 5-year-old Ayden Edwards and 12-year-old Brooklyn Wilkerson for being named 2017 Medora Christmas Festival prince and princess.

Dock diving dogs

Thumbs-up to Brittney Vetter of Seymour, who has trained her dog, Nala, in the sport of dock diving. The pair along with Elizabeth Smith, also of Seymour, and her dog, Primrose, will compete in the North America Diving Dogs AKC Eukanuba National Championships in Orlando, Florida, this weekend. The sport measures the distance in length and height when a dog jumps into a body of water after a handler tosses a toy from the dock.