CNN to give $100,000 to ‘hero’ on holiday special

NEW YORK – A woman who moved to Louisiana to help Hurricane Katrina survivors, a marathon runner who gets homeless people on their feet and several community organizers will be honored by CNN in its second Thanksgiving night “heroes” special.
The awards show, unusual for a cable news network, will give $100,000 to one of 10 individuals selected by viewers through a vote on the CNN Web site.
The special is an attempt to honor people who may not make the news, but are doing things to help others, said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. There were more than 10,000 nominations for potential “heroes,” he said.
Walton said there were discussions within CNN last year before the first “heroes” special over whether it was the right thing for a news organization to do. He said he heard an outpouring of pride from CNN employees at the way it was pulled off.
“I was really kind of skeptical about this project,” said Anderson Cooper, who will host the program Nov. 27 from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. “I was wondering how it would work. I thought it would seem cheesy in some way. I was actually blown away by last year’s special; I found it very moving.”
A panel that included Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, Deepak Chopra, Richard Branson, Magic Johnson and George Lopez selected the 10 finalists.
CNN’s nominees this year:
—Anne Mahlum, a marathon runner from Philadelphia who started the “Back on My Feet” program that gets homeless people running.
—Tad Agoglia from Oklahoma, founder of First Rescue Team of America, which goes into disaster sites and helps clean up in the immediate aftermath.
—Liz McCartney, who moved from Washington to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans to help Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild.
—Maria Da Silva, a Los Angeles nanny who founded and finances the Jacaranda School for AIDS orphans in her native Malawi.
—Viola Vaughn, a Detroit native who retired to Senegal and whose tutoring of her grandchildren led to a program providing education for many other girls.
—Maria Ruiz, of El Paso, Texas, who regularly crosses the border to provide help to poor children in Juarez, Mexico.
—Yohannes Gebregeorgis, who returned from the United States to his native Ethiopia to start a program offering library books to children.
—Phymean Noun, a Cambodian genocide survivor who lives in Toronto and has opened schools and provided health services to children in her native country.
—Carolyn LeCroy, a former prison inmate from Norfolk, Va., who started The Messages Project, which films messages from prison inmates to their families.
—David Puckett, a Savannah, Ga., man who provides prosthetics and other medical equipment to poor people in Mexico.