• Cecilia Morales, a new Transportation Security Administration officer who is also an emergency medical technician, leaped over conveyor belt rollers to save a 2-month-old boy who had stopped breathing at a checkpoint at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.
• Steve Strubberg, Missouri's state veterinarian, urged farmers to put out hay for reindeer in addition to Santa's milk and cookies as he posted a notice online allowing the sleigh-pulling reindeer to cross state lines because the North Pole is free of foot-and-mouth disease and other maladies.
• Stephanie Herrin, a 911 dispatcher in Fort Payne, Ala., who often answers calls about tragedies, said she's been overwhelmed with kindness and generosity since she and her teenage daughter lost everything in a house fire two days before Christmas.
• Jody Greene, sheriff of Columbus County, N.C., posted "I am not scared of much, but I am afraid of burning in Hell," and said he has no plans to remove a Bible quote, Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," painted on a wall outside his office.
• Park rangers at Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest peak, trekked more than a mile through heavy snow and sleet to find a hiker, who wasn't identified, who had gotten lost and was found sheltering in a small cave in "thick whiteout conditions" 13,000 feet above sea level.
• Chris Bergeron, 26, who for three years rode a bicycle to his night shift job at a doughnut shop in Houma, La., said he's still "trying to process that its mine" after a community effort raised more than $6,000 so he could buy his first car after someone stole the seat off his bike.
• Manda Hunt, executive director of the Empty Stocking Fund in Atlanta, said her group, which distributes presents to needy children, raised more than $54,000 in a single day to replace gifts taken by thieves who broke through a warehouse wall.