Boardman junior's PSA sheds light on hunger
The junior runs indoor and outdoor track at Boardman High School. In his free time over the summer, he likes to travel and hang out with friends, family, and just spend time with his loved ones. He is hoping to attend Ohio State University to major in aviation and eventually become a pilot.
'I like what the Second Harvest Food Bank stand for, and how they help provide meals for the people that can't afford them, and the people that, struggle every day in our in our community,' said Micah. 'I mean, I learned more about a problem that's in our community that I didn't know much about before. I didn't know that there's so many people around here that struggle with not being able to have a meal every day.'
Micah was the first runner-up in the contest. Read his PSA script for Second Harvest Food Bank here:
A young child is witnessed by a convenience store employee stuffing bread and eggs under his hoodie. The employee, visibly upset, takes the food from his hoodie and speaks with him.'My little sister hasn't eaten since yesterday, I can't watch her struggle any longer'
The employee, softening, exclaims to the child, 'You don't have to steal, kid. Let me help'[Cut to a Tv animated voice on a black screen] No child or family deserves the struggle of scraping together a meal to survive.[Cut to food bank volunteer or founder] In the United States alone, over 7.3 million families struggle to provide food for their children every day. In those households, one in every eight has a child who resorts to stealing in order to survive.[Cut to image displaying impoverished families] A series of images show families rationing small portions of food.[Cut back to food bank speaker] If you are in need of a meal or household goods, visit the Mahoning Valley Second Harvest Food bank today. Here you're not just a visitor—you're family.[Cut to a drone shot of the food bank building with volunteers standing at the entrance][Fade to a colorful screen displaying the following information] A header at the top of the screen reads: 'Hunger ends where kindness begins'. Below, the screen lists the food bank's phone number, address, time of service, website, and ways to volunteer.
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NTSB probes collision avoidance technology, safety systems in final day of midair collision investigative hearings
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Yahoo
3 days ago
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They lost their son in the Reagan National Airport midair collision. Now, they're fighting for aviation safety in his honor
January 29 started with such promise. Sheri Lilley visited a wedding venue in Savannah, Georgia, where her stepson Sam and his fiancee Lydia Coles were looking to get married. The date was already set: October 4, 2025. Sheri thought to herself, 'This is so fortunate. This place is perfect. It's going to work out great.' Sam was a commercial airline pilot on a trip, so Sheri asked Lydia to talk with him about the venue when he got back to their home in Charlotte. But several hours later their lives were shattered when a passenger plane collided with a Black Hawk helicopter flying over the Potomac River. Texts and calls went unanswered. No word from Sam. Sam's father, Tim, who is also a pilot, joined Sheri and Lydia on a group phone call. Everyone was in tears. They knew, even without official confirmation, something horrible had happened. 'I uttered the words to (Lydia), 'A plane has crashed in DC. We think it was Sam,'' Sheri said, still haunted by that night. Twenty-eight-year-old Sam Lilley died in January's midair collision, the deadliest plane crash in the US in 24 years. He was the first officer flying the CRJ-700 for PSA Airways, a regional carrier for American Airlines. Sixty-four people were onboard, including Sam and Captain Jonathan Campos. Three soldiers onboard the Army helicopter were also killed. That cold, devastating night would change the Lilley's lives forever. Telling the story of Sam When Tim and Sheri share their story, there are no longer many tears. They've shed so many in the six months since January 29 and dealt with the trauma as parents and a couple. It's an unthinkable situation that would test any marriage. The couple agrees they were able to get through it because of their faith. 'It takes some of the sting of death away for me, because I know when I move on, I'm going to have a chance to interact with Sam and other family members that I've lost on the way,' Tim said. The night of the crash Tim and his family went straight to Washington. He was no stranger to aviation or crash investigations. A former active-duty Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot himself, he flew in combat on four tours, conducted accident investigations while on active duty, and worked for almost 16 years as an emergency medical pilot. Now, he understood more about the investigation when it was his family involved. The first time Tim walked into a conference room where victim's families were meeting with the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency responsible for investigating his son's crash, he brought an iPad loaded with helicopter routes and airplane flight paths. Tim had a lot of questions. He wanted to know what happened to his son and why. The quest for answers was a coping mechanism, but it didn't stop the traumatizing breakdowns and cries. Tim didn't sleep for the first few nights after the accident. 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To this day, Sheri said, six or seven of the victims of the crash haven't been publicly identified. There's a Flight 5342 Slack channel that shares birthdays and anniversaries of their loved ones. Sheri said May was a hard month full of celebrations that never happened. 'As a pilot, you bear this responsibility to get people safely where they're supposed to go,' Tim said. 'They expected them to get there and they were almost there. It's just heartbreaking.' A life together cut short October 4 will still be celebrated between Tim, Sheri, and Lydia. Plans haven't been finalized, but they know they'll take a trip somewhere to memorialize Sam and what would have been the day he and Lydia were married. Sam met Lydia at a church camp when they were 14 and were really close friends, but she was dating a friend of his at the time. Over the years, they reconnected. About two and a half years ago, on St. Patrick's Day, Sam 'accidentally' introduced his parents to Lydia, after engaging in holiday 'liquid celebrations,' Sheri said laughing. Very quickly, Tim and Sheri saw exactly what their son saw in Lydia. 'She has so much emotional maturity, she really brought out the best in him,' Sheri said. 'They brought out the best in each other.' Last October, just east of Dublin, Ireland, Sam got down on one knee with an emerald ring in hand and asked Lydia to be his wife. In July, Tim, Sheri and Lydia went to Ireland and she showed them where Sam proposed. That spot felt sacred to Sheri – where Sam felt one of the most joyful moments of his life. The three also sat down at a seafood tapas restaurant Sam and Lydia had gone to after she said 'yes.' When their server put their food down, Sheri noticed an airplane tattoo on the server's arm. 'My eyes just filled with tears,' Sherri said. It's those little moments that let them know whether on Capitol Hill, at home in Savanah or deep in Ireland, Sam will be with them forever. Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
20-06-2025
- New York Times
Why are ungraded cards starting to sell for more than cards graded in mint condition?
Trading card collectors and dealers largely view grading as the ultimate arbiter of the condition and value of the card. In other words, if a company like leading card grader PSA says your card is a Mint 9 (on a 1-10 scale) even though you can't perceive any flaw, it's stuck there, encased for eternity like a prehistoric insect in amber. It's frozen in time in that eternal state. Advertisement It's at the point now that a modern card with a 'mint' grade (a 9) is often worth less than a card not graded at all. That's because the ungraded ('raw' in the parlance of the hobby) card holds the possibility of being a 10 if it gets graded. But a 9 will always just be a 9, the thinking goes. But what if the arbiter is arbitrary? A recent YouTube video by a Pokemon collector who believed many of his 9s deserved gem-mint 10s seems to prove that grading is quite subjective. Minor flaws that prevent a perfect grade initially can be overlooked when the card is cracked out of its plastic tomb and resubmitted. It's as if the flaw(s) were never there at all. YouTube creator 'Pokemon Steven' sent 189 cards that he thought were perfect but were graded a notch below by PSA back for regrading after cracking them out of their slabs. Most were regraded the same way. But a couple were graded as altered/trimmed upon second look and others were graded lower/worse than a 9, sometimes by multiple grades. But 81 came back perfect 10s. That's 43 percent deemed worthy of a higher grade upon another look unbeknownst to PSA, of course. And if you think that was some fluke, PokeTCGivaways showed on its X account a resubmission, with labels as proof, of 15 mostly 9s but two graded an 8 ('near mint-mint'). Of those, 11 came back with new grades — 10 upgraded to a 10 and one of the 8s downgraded to a 7. When asked whether differences between a 9 and 10 are so minor that cards just teeter between them, the account responded, 'Maybe. I also think a lot of graders will have different opinions and it all depends on who you get grading your cards.' If you're wondering why these examples are trading card game (TCG) cards and not sports, a big reason is the majority of the 100,000 cards graded daily (all graders, not just PSA) are TCG (most of those being Pokemon, according to GemRate, which tracks grading trends). But cardboard is cardboard, and if TCG grades are changing at such a high rate, there's no reason to think sports cards would not follow the same pattern. Advertisement This does not necessarily mean you should crack your 9s and resubmit, though. 'Under no circumstances, do not follow in my footsteps,' Pokemon Steven said on his video. 'This is reckless and a waste of money. Two grading fees. Shipping fees. (I paid) $40 per card. Some cards (I resubmitted) are not even worth $40.' He said he did it because he specifically collects 10s and felt those cards deserved the perfect grade; it had nothing to do with money. But this admittedly crazy experiment that executor says should not be repeated shows that there may be a market inefficiency in dismissing cards graded less than gem mint as lower in value than ungraded ones. Sure, the raw card may be a 10; for Topps 2025 Baseball about 21 percent of submissions get the perfect grade. But that's less than half the rate of Mint 9s that get turned into a 10 on resubmission, according to these Pokemon collectors. So why not take the steep discount that's often 50 percent or more on a graded 9? If the market for the player explodes, the owner can release it from its slab and try again for a 10. If the card was bought graded, the resubmission is not a second grading expense for that owner. (Dealers told The Athletic that the cost of grading is not factored into the value of a card.) PSA President Ryan Hoge questioned the validity of these types of experiments, though. 'We understand the allure of videos showing cracked PSA 9s coming back as 10s, but these often lack key context—and in some cases, accuracy,' he told The Athletic. 'We often see examples where entirely different cards are resubmitted under the guise of being the same. Our Brand Protection team monitors this kind of content carefully and handles those on a case-by-case basis. 'Every card that enters our facility is evaluated by multiple professional graders. When differences arise, our process ensures consensus before a final grade is issued. No grading company in the world holds itself to a higher or more consistent standard than PSA.' Advertisement While many modern mint cards do sell for more than raw, the difference is getting smaller and often does not justify the cost of grading. It's not difficult to find examples of inverted pricing, meaning the ungraded card goes for more money than Mint 9s. For example, according to CardLadder, a 2013 Panini Select Giannis Antetokounmpo #178 sells for $100 in PSA 9 and $124 ungraded. Of course, it's an ungraded one with no obvious flaws but a PSA 9 can have no obvious flaws, too. There have been no recent sales of a PSA 10, according to CardLadder, but assume it would sell for at about twice as much as a PSA 9. A 2018 Topps Chrome Sapphire Shohei Ohtani #700 rookie card sold for $2,075.50 in a PSA 9 grade on March 17, which was less than the last raw sale of $2,336. A PSA 10 last sold for $4,200. The Topps Chrome Ohtani #150 Refractor sold for $466 ungraded in June, a week before it sold for $355 in PSA 9. The raw buyer was hoping for a PSA 10 that last sold for $820; but the PSA 9 could potentially have at least as good a chance at grading a 10 if it was cracked and resubmitted. Rob DeMay, creator of the NEO Cards & Comics YouTube channel which regularly produces videos on grading and the card industry, advocated buying 9s for the value before these regrading results were made public. 'They're the ultimate collector card. It's not perfect. (The PSA 9) has an issue. But you're getting a steep discount. If you're keeping it, it limits the downside risk because the card is less expensive.' But now those 9s could end up being 10s. 'I'm not surprised by (these results),' he recently told The Athletic. 'We're paying a human for an opinion, and until they figure out some sort of AI grading, you're going to see things like this. Could you blindly buy all PSA 9s and repeat this result? I don't think so. However, if you were very selective, I could see you having some success with this strategy.' The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.
