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December 9, 2024

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Stephen Knight, who provides foster homes for dogs while their owners seek addiction treatment, is CNN’s Hero of the Year

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“This means everything. I represent so much here. I represent the recovery community. The dog rescue community. … This is going to be able to take us to the next level.”

Knight’s journey began in 2011, when at the age of 51, he had lost everything to meth addiction – his family, his job, his home, and nearly his life. HIV positive, and living out of his car, Knight entered rehab at the behest of his mother.

After months of treatment, and at a delicate time in his recovery, Knight’s life changed when a friend showed up at his door in tears. She had relapsed, and in her arms was her beloved dog, Jayde. Knight’s friend said no one would take Jayde, and she asked Knight for a ride to a shelter so she could surrender her.

“I looked at Jayde, and we looked at each other,” Knight said. “It was one of the most spiritual moments, like ‘I think we might need each other here.’”

Knight soon realized that other people were delaying or forgoing treatment because they could not find safe housing for their pets. He sought advice on best practices from a local animal rescue and educated himself on foster care protocol.

“These shelters are running 150 percent over capacity. If you’re over capacity, then you start euthanizing dogs,” Knight said. “We cannot have the solution be euthanize dogs. We can’t.”

1,200 dogs and counting

In 2015, Knight’s organization, Dogs Matter, became a registered nonprofit, and he buttoned up his program – vetting applicants, conducting animal behavior assessments, and executing contracts that require participants to stick to their recovery plan and complete a 12-month post-release wraparound program.

Today, Knight lives with his three dogs, Jayde, Piper and Lady, and his organization has helped more than 1,200 dogs and their owners. As Knight approaches 14 years clean and sober, he hopes to make Dogs Matter a national model program, with the goal of giving other animals and their humans the same second chance at life that he got.

“I share this award with Jayde. She’s the reason why I did this. One act of kindness and then to have that dream and that goal to be able to help others and do one step at a time to get there. And…1,200 dogs later it’s amazing. It’s just beginning too.”

A night celebrating selflessness

During his acceptance remarks, Fox shared the honor with others.

“I’m very proud on behalf of all the people with Parkinson’s and their families who’ve fought so hard for a cure and fought so hard for answers and new drugs in the pipeline, and through our foundation have found a way to realize that.”

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This post appeared first on cnn.com

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In Business

Court rejects Boeing plea deal tied to 737 Max crashes

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A federal judge rejected Boeing’s plea deal tied to a criminal fraud charge stemming from fatal crashes of its 737 Max aircraft.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas expressed concern in his decision on Thursday that a government-appointed monitor, a condition of the plea deal, would include diversity, equity and inclusion policiies.

He wrote that “the Court is not convinced in light of the foregoing that the Government will not choose a monitor without race-based considerations and thus will not act in a nondiscriminatory manner. In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency.”

In October, O’Connor ordered Boeing and the Justice Department to provide details on diversity, equity and inclusion policies when the monitor would be selected.

The court gave Boeing and the Justice Department 30 days to decide how to proceed, according to a court document filed Thursday.

In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by misleading regulators about its inclusion of a flight-control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two crashes — a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. All 346 people on the flights were killed.

Boeing and the Justice Department didn’t immediately comment.

Victims’ family members had taken issue with a government-appointed monitor as a condition of the plea deal and sought to provide more input. They called it a “sweetheart deal.”

Erin Applebaum, an attorney representing one of the victim’s family members applauded the deal. “We anticipate a significant renegotiation of the plea deal that incorporates terms truly commensurate with the gravity of Boeing’s crimes,” Applebaum said in a statement. “It’s time for the DOJ to end its lenient treatment of Boeing and demand real accountability.”

The deal was set to allow Boeing to avoid a trial just as it was trying to get the company back on solid footing after a door burst off of a flight in midair at the start of the year, reigniting a safety crisis at the manufacturer.

The new plea deal arose after the Justice Department said in May that Boeing violated a previous plea agreement, which was set to expire days after the door plug blew off the 737 Max 9 on Jan. 5. O’Connor said in his decision on Thursday that it “is not clear what all Boeing has done to breach the Deferred Prosecution Agreement.”

Under the new plea agreement, Boeing was set to face a fine of up to $487.2 million. However, the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half that amount it paid under a previous agreement, resulting in a fine of $243.6 million.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

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