Fighting for their lives
A 13-year-old was riding her bicycle when she came across a helpless bird. “It was just a baby,” she said. “It was not quite ready to leave the nest, but it had.” The teenager had always loved animals — and...
Category: Features
Their sweet success
A classically trained French pastry chef’s friend tells her she should consider collaborating with a man who roasts his own coffee — that his skills could add something to her restaurant. Debi Newton replies with an emphatic, “No.” But then...
Out of the woods
Jason Daniels secures a rope to the thickest branch he can find halfway up one of the decades-old trees nestled in the woods behind Berkeley Mall. He knows a powerful storm is approaching Goldsboro — that he will likely be...
His eyes on the prize
It’s six o’clock in the morning and the sky is starting to brighten, but the streets that separate the apartment buildings tucked inside the West Haven housing projects remain dark. The groups of young men who were running the block...
A home invaded. A life interrupted.
It’s the middle of the night and Christian Hernandez’s heart is racing. The 20-year-old had closed his eyes a few hours earlier, but his sleep was abruptly interrupted when he saw his sister in his dreams. There is a massive...
Searching for servants
They are the servant generation, the hundreds of Wayne County residents who populated the community’s service organizations — leading them, guiding them, and supporting them. But they are getting older — and tired. Their numbers have dwindled, and now a....
Hitting home
There were already bullet holes in her bedroom window, but every time the police would intervene, Bailey’s abuser would find a way to pay his bond. He was no longer the beloved partner who fathered her children — the man...
Supporting act
I hear you’re asking around If I’m anywhere to be found. But I have grown too strong To ever fall back into your arms. “Jar of Hearts,” Christina Perri For a while, Megan Sutton’s heart was broken. Most people who...
Jayda’s gift
Aleah Hill drives toward the basket and pushes off with her right leg — elevating before softly lifting the ball through the net. The crowd goes wild, but the 14-year-old is focused on a single chant coming from the bleachers....
A link to the past
She only glances down at them for a moment — the used white syringes scattered outside the front of a Goldsboro landmark that has been standing for more than 100 years. But when Julie Metz approaches a sinkhole in between...