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CNN 5 Good Things
How about a break — for your ears? At CNN, we know the news can be a lot to take in. So each week, 5 Good Things offers you a respite from the heavy headlines and intense news cycle. Treat yourself to something fun and uplifting every Saturday as we share the bright side of life from all over the globe.
A Foster Kid Came for Surgery. He Left With a Family
CNN 5 Good Things
Mar 7, 2026
He’s a software engineer by day – but in his free time, he cleans up trash in the San Francisco Bay area. A heartbreaking moment in a hospital room led to a ripple effect of kindness for six siblings in foster care. This app helps foster kids understand their rights. Mother-daughter divers made a surprising discovery in the Great Barrier Reef. A 77-year-old man with a motorcycle says now is the best time to chase a world record.
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Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco
Producer: Eryn Mathewson
Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin
Editorial Support: Randi Kaye, Tamara Hardingham-Gill
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:00
'Hey there, welcome, welcome. I'm Krista Bo Polanco, and this is CNN 5 Good Things. It's International Women's Day tomorrow, so we'll tell you how a mother-daughter dive turned into a record-breaking discovery. And in Nebraska, a four-year-old in foster care showed up for a major heart surgery all by himself, but his new family wasn't far behind.
Amy Beethe
00:00:21
This whole experience that we've been living the last four or five years has just shown like what kindness truly does and the butterfly effect of it. Our kids deserve better.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:33
Plus the app that helps foster kids nationwide understand their rights.
Aheim
00:00:37
I felt like it was my out, it was my ticket that I can, I can make it. Despite everything that I've been through.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:44
'Later on, hear the travel inspo you need from a 77-year-old who says now is the best time to chase a world record. We gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, when one volunteer was tired of seeing his neighborhood covered in trash, he decided to do something about it.
Andy Wang
00:01:05
We live in such a beautiful area in America and to see so much trash just laying along the sides of the grass and along the hillside, it's just, it's disappointing.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:18
'Andy Wang is a 31-year-old software engineer by day, but in his free time, he picks up trash in the San Francisco Bay area, a lot of it. He started volunteering in 2021, after noticing more and more litter scattered around during his commute.
Andy Wang
00:01:33
I want to help the Bay Area look really nice. This is something that I can do. I have gloves. I have bags. I have trash grabbers.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:43
Illegal dumping is a major issue in parts of the Bay Area, especially in cities like Oakland.
Andy Wang
00:01:49
Frequently we would see stories about trash just completely covering a street and so when I hear about that then I would like try my best to help out if I can so the streets are cleaner and kids can get to school safely, that sort of stuff.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:04
'He estimates he's done more than 100 cleanups since starting. He's cleaned some areas so large, he says you can actually see the difference from Google Earth. A single cleanup can take two to three hours and fill dozens of industrial-sized 35-gallon bags. Sometimes a small crew of volunteers joins him.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:21
And Andy coordinates with city leaders in local public works departments to haul everything away. He also works to unclog storm drains after heavy rain. He documents all his cleanups on his YouTube and social media channels under his username, Peng Weather, hoping others will do the same in their own neighborhoods.
Andy Wang
00:02:38
Nothing makes my day more than hearing from somebody that tells me, 'hey, Andy, thank you for inspiring me.' That really motivates me, you know, to keep going.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:50
'At the first time, Dr. Amy Beafy met the four-year-old boy who would become her son, he was sitting all alone in a hospital room, waiting for major heart surgery.
Amy Beethe
00:02:59
'He had a Spider-Man backpack and hot sauce because he's obsessed with hot sauce. That's all he had with him. And it was just like one of those moments that just kind of like gutted a person. It just, you just see this little boy that's sitting there scared and all alone. And at first you're just like, what is going on here? Like who, how did this happen?
Krista Bo Polanco
00:03:18
The answer was heartbreaking. She learned True was one of six siblings placed in foster care and his caseworker, who normally would have been there, had COVID. True was born with a rare heart defect. That means one side of his heart has to do the work of both. By the time Amy met him in January of 2022 as his anesthesiologist, he already had multiple major surgeries. Doctors said he'll eventually need a heart transplant.
Amy Beethe
00:03:42
But unfortunately, given his social situation, he wouldn't have been a candidate for pediatric heart transplant because of the scarcity of organs. So, you know, and like that was weighing really heavily on me saying like, you, know, if somebody doesn't change his kid's status, his outlook is even worse.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:03:59
Amy just couldn't stop thinking about him. She and her husband were already parents to six, including three foster children.
Amy Beethe
00:04:06
As soon as I dropped True off in recovery, I called my husband and I was, you know, almost in tears. I was just like, you know, I know we have six kids. I know we're done. I know, like we were not taken anymore, but there is just this little boy up here and I just really need you to keep an open mind.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:23
A month later, True moved in and was part of the family. Amy realized how close he was to his five biological siblings, so she arranged weekly play dates with them so they could see each other. But during those visits, she noticed signs they weren't doing well either.
Amy Beethe
00:04:37
At these play dates, I would just see weird marks, or they were really skinny, or they're really dirty, or he would say they haven't showered. You know, just like things that just aren't normal.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:50
'She spoke with the caseworker about it and everyone agreed that they needed to find new homes for the five kids. So Amy made a few calls. Her sister adopted one sibling, her husband's twin and his wife adopted another, and one of Amy's co-workers stepped up to adopt two more.
Amy Beethe
00:05:05
And by that time, there was just one little kiddo that needed a home. And I, I just said, well, I can take, I absolutely can take Lainey if that's what keeps these kids together. So that's how we completed the whole adoption process.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:20
The Beattie family now has eight kids, including their three biological children. And in August of 2023, all the families gathered for one big adoption celebration to make it official. True turned 10 on Tuesday.
Amy Beethe
00:05:34
He got a hoverboard for his birthday. So now that's his new thing is going outside and doing those things. So, you know, if you would see true, you would have no idea how sick his heart really is because yeah, like he fights so hard just to, just to be the normal kid. Cause that's all he wants.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:50
True will still need a heart transplant someday, but now he has the one thing he didn't have that day in the hospital, a family beside him.
Amy Beethe
00:05:58
This whole experience that we've been living the last four or five years has just shown like what kindness truly does and the butterfly effect of it. Our kids deserve better.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:06:13
Ugh, as True's story shows, finding a permanent home can change a foster kid's life. But understanding the system they're in can also change their future. That's exactly why Taylor Sartor created this app.
Taylor Sartor
00:06:25
FosterPower is the first and only app in the country that explains benefits and protections of legal rights for kids in foster care in Florida. I like to say it's everything you need to know if you're a child in fostercare.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:06:37
Taylor is an attorney for kids in foster care based in Tampa, Florida. She says she kept hearing the same questions from the teens that she worked with.
Taylor Sartor
00:06:45
Oh, this youth has a sibling they haven't seen in years. Do they have the right to visit with that sibling or not? What do they need to do to stay in the program? Someone may be prescribed psychotropic medications and didn't wanna take it. What happens next? So I sort of just, you know, got these questions and started researching and realized, wow, this takes a long time to look up all these answers. No one has time to do this. There's gotta be some kind of comprehensive guide that exists that explains. The rights that kids have when they're in foster care.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:17
'So she created the app, which explains things like court hearings, education benefits, and mental health services in terms kids can understand. CNN's Randi Kaye spoke to Aheim King, a 22-year-old who was placed in foster care when he was 15.
Randi Kaye
00:07:29
What did it resolve for you?
Aheim
00:07:31
Medicine. It helped me get to like medicine. So I started taking medicine and my scores went up like just like that. It was amazing.
Randi Kaye
00:07:39
And you wouldn't have known about the medicine had you not looked at the foster power.
Aheim
00:07:43
I would not have known about anything, any mental health service is nothing.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:47
'He also learned he qualified for free college tuition thanks to the app. So now the 22-year-old is studying to become a nurse at Florida State University with dreams of going to medical school. Goals Aheim thought were all out of reach as a kid until foster power.
Aheim
00:08:01
A lot of times we'll be down in the system and we may be weak in, but you also have to speak up for yourself. But you have to have that mental fortitude to keep on going and keep on asking for help. I felt like it was my out, it was ticket that I can make it despite everything I've been through.
Jan Pope
00:08:22
I looked into the water and saw this amazing pattern and it just went on and on. I thought, that's really weird, I've never seen anything like that.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:30
'A mother-daughter diving duo in Australia discovered the world's largest coral colony ever recorded in the Great Barrier Reef.
'Sophie Kalkowski-Pope
00:08:37
From when I hopped in the water I realized the significance of what we were seeing and that it was something very, very special.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:43
'Sophie Kalkowski-Pope is the Marine Operations Coordinator at a conservation organization called Citizens of the Reef. Her mom, Jan Pope, is an underwater photographer and conservationist herself. Together they were surveying reefs off the coast of Australia as part of the Great Reef Census, a massive citizen science effort to document reef health. The beautiful, vibrant colony Sophie and Jan found covers the length of a soccer pitch.
'Sophie Kalkowski-Pope
00:09:07
You get down there and it's just these meadows of rippling coral as far as the eye can see and there's fish life everywhere, beautiful anemones. When we were here there was a school of barracudas circling around, sharks, turtles, it's a real hot spot of life out here.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:24
This colossal coral find comes as reefs worldwide face widespread bleaching and warming oceans. So how is this colony so resilient, you ask? Well, the area gets powerful tidal flow and is shielded from the worst tropical cyclone waves, and scientists are now studying whether those conditions helped this coral structure grow to such an extraordinary size.
'Sophie Kalkowski-Pope
00:09:44
It just shows how much more is out there that we don't know about. If this is right under our noses here, what else have we got to discover?
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:54
Up next.
Steven Barnett
00:09:56
You never know how long you have, so don't put things off.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:00
The reminder we all need that it's never too late for an adventure.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:09
'Steven Barnett got his first motorcycle when he was 15-years- old. Oh my God, my parents would have killed me. Now the 77- year-old is starting the adventure of a lifetime. He's attempting to set the record for the oldest man to motorcycle around the world.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:25
Steven says he got the idea after reading a CNN article about Bridget McCutchen, who was attempting to become the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe on a motorcycle in 2022. By the way, Guinness World Records says she achieved that in November of 2023.
Steven Barnett
00:10:39
I said, wait a minute, if she can do it as the youngest woman, why can't I do it as the oldest man?
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:45
The retired business professor from Los Angeles has lived in Panama for two decades, and he loves to travel. He says he's been to 140 countries and has ridden his motorcycle across nearly 80 countries. He's supposed to fly out today to start his journey in Spain. From there, he plans to ride across Europe, through Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and then onward to Australia and the Americas, covering roughly 50,000 miles across 27 countries. He thinks the trip could take about a year.
Steven Barnett
00:11:10
It's a roller coaster. Some days you say, this is so cool being out here, this is the greatest thing in the world. And other days you saying, holy beep, what am I doing out here? The people you meet on the way, that's what makes these trips.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:11:26
And while he's tackled plenty of long rides before, this one comes after a serious health scare. Last Thanksgiving, Steven had a heart attack that required stents, but that didn't slow him down.
Steven Barnett
00:11:36
Two months later, I was off to Vietnam for a three month motorcycle trip. My cardiologist said,'you're nuts.' And I said, 'hey, this is what I like to do.' But it got me thinking, you know, you never know how long you have. So don't put things off.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:11:54
That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening and join us tomorrow for the next edition of CNN One Thing wherever you get your podcasts. Have a good day. Take care. Til next time.
