My Choice for Hero of the Year

Each year CNN presents  an award to one person among thousands who have been nominated for Hero of the Year.  Out of that huge group, ten finalists are chosen and viewers can vote for their choice.  Carrie Meghie didn't make the top ten, but she's my choice for Hero of the Year.

Often it's the seemingly trivial things that are overlooked when a family is in crisis. Trivial things, like getting to the hospital or even if you do, the high cost of parking.  When Carrie's infant son spent the ten short months of his life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, she was with him
every day, but she noticed that many other parents weren't able to visit their infants because of the high costs of transportation and parking.  So to honor her child's memory, she vowed to help parents meet those needs.  She and her husband started the Jackson Chance Foundation and have raised over $1.5 million dollars to pay transportation expenses or parking fees for parents of infants in the NICU.
How many people would have thought of this small yet large way to ease the worries of parents who long to spend time with their babies but can't afford to do so?

Why did I choose Carrie, even though she isn't a finalist?  When my husband Ralph was in the hospital battling leukemia, I spent over $2000 parking in the Texas Medical Center even though I bought monthly parking passes at a reduced rate.  So I know first hand how parking fees can eat up funds.  That's one reason why Carrie is my Hero of the Year.