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A retired Chillicothe Police Department sergeant, John Valbracht enjoys restoring old vehicles. But when John, 70, was alone working on an old trailer, a routine task turned dangerous.  

"It was a nice day, and my goal was to put a new tongue and fuel tank on this trailer, but when the tongue broke off in my hand, it changed my plans," John says.  

John was unloading an old trailer he’d hauled home on another trailer when the weight shifted unexpectedly at the top of the ramp.  

Cali Horton, a 21-year-old student from Blue Springs, was a survivor from day one.

Her mother, Heather Horton, was pregnant with twins and diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome—uneven blood flow between twins sharing a placenta. Both twins, Cali and her sister Kara, were born prematurely and spent three weeks in Saint Luke’s neonatal intensive care unit.

As a result, Cali suffered from a rare vascular malformation of the brain, which required radiation treatment at age 2. Over time, the treatment fully cured her malformation.

Jesus Renteria is a 47-year husband and father, and owner of a successful taco truck business in Kansas City. One afternoon Jesus had finished serving lunch and returned home. That’s when his stroke came without previous warning: the worst headache Jesus had ever experienced. It spread through his whole head, and Jesus felt dizzy.

“My whole life I’ve been very healthy, so I had never been to a hospital. However, this was so painful I asked my wife to take me to the ER,” said Renteria.