A kindergarten teacher in Mansfield, Ohio, is set to donate a kidney to a former student.

Wendy Killian, 39, has been approved as a donor for 8-year-old Nicole Miller who suffers from branchiootorenal syndrome, a genetic disorder "that typically disrupts the development of tissues in the neck and causes malformations of the ears and kidneys."

Nicole was born with only one kidney — and it was small, malformed and failed to grow with the child.

"She would always come in with such a smile," Killian, a kindergarten teacher at Mansfield Christian School, said of her former student. "She was just this bright light in the classroom."

Before Killian stepped forward as a potential donor, the Miller family struggled to find a match for Nicole.

"I emailed practically every person on my contact list," Brian Miller, Nicole’s father, told the Mansfield News Journal. "I also started a blog. We had a lot of responses."

Neither Miller nor his wife, Letitia, could be donors. Miller's blood pressure was

Almost two decades after being removed from his loving foster family's home, Maurice Griffin, 32, can officially call Lisa Godbold "mom."

Griffin came to live with Godbold and her now-deceased husband, Charles, and their two boys, Gideon and Spencer, when he was just 9 years old. Less than four years later, just two months before the Godbolds were set to adopt Griffin, the state removed him from the home because he requested to be spanked like the other two boys.

"You can't spank foster children. Maurice very much wanted that," Godbold told CNN. "We wanted him to feel like the rest of our kids. And there was a difference of opinion with some of the (child welfare) supervisors."

The request prompted social workers to yank him from the Godbolds' home — and threaten to take away Godbold's biological children, too, if she protested.

"I completely agreed with my mom on how they planned on raising me and the system didn't agree with it. It was like being abducted from your family and being

Susan Spencer-Wendel knows she's dying.

The mother of three with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) recently completed her memoirs, "Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living with Joy," in which she describes her intentions to live out the rest of her life with purpose, intent and joy.

"I leave you, my children, the memories of all we enjoyed and discovered," she writes. "I leave this book. The one I worked on each day for most of our magical year. G-O-O-D-B-Y-E my loves."

The award-winning reporter typed the 89,000-word book on her iPhone with her right thumb, the only part of her body below her neck she can still move.

The book chronicles her life story — and the bucket-list adventures she's had since her 2011 diagnosis.

She travelled to see the Northern Lights with her best friend. She celebrated her 20th anniversary with her husband in Budapest.

"My husband, John Wendel, and I came to Budapest in February to celebrate our 20-year wedding anniversary in the place where our life

On Tuesday, Ainsley Chapman, 22, was feeding the birds in London, Ontario's Harris Park as he does most days.

What he didn't realize was how deep the mud was. His wheelchair slid from the river bank into the cold Thames River and got stuck in waist-deep water.

"I didn’t think the water was that deep. My chair was in the water, my legs were cold," Chapman told the London Free Press.

Evan Spindler, 15, saw Chapman's distress from his house nearby and ran to his rescue.

"I saw this guy in a wheelchair moving around for a while, and I was about to head back in and one of my Mom's friend walked by and I started chatting with her. We both noticed that this paraplegic guy was in the water and I was like, 'Well, it's really cold and he probably shouldn't be in there,' so I decided to run over and see if I could help him out in any way possible," the tenth grade student told AM980.

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Spinder, who is training to

(KMOV.com)Abbey Donohoe, 29, of Bettendorf, Iowa, recently discovered her birth family, by accident, on Facebook.

Donohoe's friend, Paula O'Brien, had posted a message about a baby given up for adoption 29 years ago. She included the birth date: September 19th.

"It was just a surreal," Donohoe told KWQC. "Did I really just accidentally find my birth family?"

"When I was a little girl, one of my older brothers and his girlfriend gave a baby up for adoption," O'Brien said. "It really had an impact on me and for years, I had hoped to find her."

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O'Brien was 11 years old when she learned her brother had fathered a child. She was extremely disappointed that he didn't raise the baby.

"I was heartbroken," she told the Quad-City Times. "I was so ready. I was the youngest one in the family, so I wanted another girl around the house."

"It stayed with me all my life," she said. "I just always had this sense that she was out there.

It's a milestone in the life of brave four-year-old Gavin.

Completely blind, the cute preschooler recently stepped down a curb on his own.

"You can tell he was unsure, yet, he is a lesson in bravery! He has been using his cane independently for a few months now, we have just been working on his steps/curbs/stairs with the cane. He had to talk his way through this, but he did not want any help!" Gavin's parents write on YouTube.

"I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back, hearing him say 'I can do it' is pretty touching. To me, this is something I hear all the time from him, but to capture it on video, when he was very hesitant is pretty cool. My little guy is such a trooper, and is my lesson in bravery, determination and perseverance!" Gavin's mother, Jennifer, writes on her blog, Living with LCA.

"Gavin Robert Stevens was born on Oct. 2, 2008. At 4 months old, we received confirmation of our ever growing worry. Gavin was completely blind. He has Leber's Congenital Amaurosis

Iram Leon and his daughter, Kiana.Iram Leon crossed the finish line first in the 2013 Gusher Marathon on Saturday in south Beaumont, Texas. But because he was pushing his 6-year-old daughter Kiana in a stroller the entire time, he insists she's the actual winner.

"But here sore, reflecting and grateful, I still can’t believe that I won a marathon. Well, I came in second behind Kiana. At the awards ceremony, I immediately placed it on her neck and like every other race she’s been part of it that medal hangs in her room," Leon wrote on his blog.

Leon, 32, won the marathon in 3:07:36, six minutes ahead of the second finisher, Jerod Honrath.

Even more remarkable than winning a marathon with a stroller in tow is winning one with terminal brain cancer. But that's just what Leon did.

"This is supposed to eat away at my memory in the end," Iram Leon told the Beaumont Enterprise of the cancer in his left temporal lobe. "But I hope this memory is one of the last things to go and one she never loses."

The part of his brain where

Last week, an Estonian man in his mid-80s returned a book to the Tallinn Central Library. It was overdue — by 69 years.

His explanation for the lateness? World War II.

The man checked out the book on March 7, 1944, while Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany.

He blamed an aerial bombing that damaged the library for the late return of the novel by Eduard Vilde. No other details were given as to why it took so long to return the book.

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He returned the book, still containing the serial number that allowed librarians to identify it, with an apology and an offer to pay a late free.

The library waived all late charges.

Moral of the story: If you ever need to get out of late charges, blame the Nazis.

In February, a book was returned to the New York Public Library 55 years overdue. The lender included a $100 cheque to cover any fines. The library said that, at most, the fine would have been the book's replacement.