Melissa and Mark Hortman's work lives on through trained service dogs
Melissa and Mark Hortman served their community in many ways, including training dogs to be service animals for people in need.
WCCO spoke with the volunteer group and a veteran who has benefited from their efforts.
Minnie, 11, is a special Labrador. She's the perfect companion for veteran Aric Elsner.
"She's just the greatest gift, and I've told many people, and I still say this, this dog saved my life," Elsner said.
He served in the Minnesota Air National Guard for more than 25 years and lives every day with physical and mental pain.
"I had a lot of health issues, PTSD was one diagnosis, and I was diagnosed with a very painful musculoskeletal condition too," Elsner said.
That's when Helping Paws came into his life. He was matched with Minnie.
"If I'm anxious at home or I have a bad dream, she's right there," Elsner said.
Minnie went through two-and-a-half years of training at Helping Paws, working directly with the Hortman family, who volunteered to train her. It started as a high school service project for their daughter, but when she left for college, Mark Hortman finished training Minnie.
"Their love for helping others, their love for doing something above themselves, is just living on every day with the gift that I got from their family," Alyssa Golob, executive director with Helping Paws, said.
Gilbert never graduated from training school, but went on to be a beloved pet of the Hortman family. Melissa and Mark Hortman and Gilbert were shot and killed on Saturday.
"It's evil on its own, and then you add in an innocent dog, and that's a certain kind of evil," Golob said.
Minnie is just one of the many examples of Melissa and Mark Hortman's legacy living on, continuing to serve Minnesotans for the better.
Since Saturday, Helping Paws donations have been pouring in, totalling more than $10,000. The money will be used to continue connecting veterans with service dogs.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
I'm a mom of 5 and thought work would get easier as the kids got older. I was wrong.
I'm a mom of five kids ranging from ages 5 to 17. I thought having teens would be easier than having toddlers for my career. Turns out teens are even more demanding, and I need to give myself grace. As the mother of five kids, four of whom were born in six years, I have spent all of my 17 years of parenting working from home in some capacity. And in those 17 years, I've been successful under the definition of a capitalist viewpoint. The first year I hit a profit with my writing business was the same year I birthed my fourth child. I went viral, was interviewed by Good Morning America, and churned out work at a rate that left many people wondering how I did it all, considering my oldest child was only 6 and my husband worked several jobs. I struggled to balance it all, but I remember thinking that that time in my life, full of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, would be the hardest part of my life. I just had to make it through, and then I could coast. I was so terribly wrong. Now that most of my kids are tweens and teens, I find myself in the weeds of parenting all over again, but this time I'm somehow even more exhausted, confused, and overwhelmed. Instead of dealing with potty training and tantrums, I'm dealing with teen drivers, volatile emotions, and big life decisions. I feel frustrated and guilty, like I'm doing something wrong for somehow being less productive as the mother of older kids. I think part of it is that when they were small, there was a routine that let me get some work done. There were daily nap times I could count on, movies I could turn on, or playdates I could schedule. But with teens, I am never off the clock. I'm always a text away, and with a teen driver, I feel like I can't not be available 24/7. Also, older kids take up more space, are louder, and have more intense needs than I anticipated. Every day feels like a circus show of juggling, and I'm kind of holding my breath and hoping I'll have enough breathing room to manage any work. While a cartoon and snuggles could suffice with a toddler, teenagers require 50 memes, a thoughtful conversation, and probably Chick-fil-A to connect. I feel a pressure to be emotionally available in a way I didn't when they were younger, and that makes it hard to switch back and forth to work mode when working from home. I don't want to be resentful of being "interrupted," and of course, I want to be there for my kids and hear all the details and be available for their lives. I want to be that person for them, and I'm all too aware how fast and fleeting it all is, and I could lose one of them next year to college. You know the guilt heaped on moms of young kids about how fast it all goes, so you better soak it in? Well, as a mom of teens, that guilt is magnified by about a million because this is exactly the time they were talking about — we're living the slow slippage of our kids out of our lives daily. I want to embrace it, soak it in, and be here for it. But I also have to pay my bills, and I don't know how to do both right now. I'm trying some new things, like getting noise-cancelling headphones, setting more firm boundaries about when I can and can't be interrupted, and trying to shift more of my morning chores to later in the day so I have more work time. The pressures and intensity of this stage feel a lot like the new parent stage all over again, only without the cute baby to cuddle. I still have plenty of sleepless nights, too — watching your child on Life360 is the new baby monitor. Maybe I just need to give myself the same amount of grace (and coffee) as I did back then. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
After my marriage fell apart, darkness got to me. Then I was catfished
'You don't revere me anymore.' The words rolled off my tongue at my husband, who had been acting strangely for a few days. 'Revere?' he said with such distaste that it stunned me. Then I did what any wife married for 23 years might do: I read his emails. I wanted the truth. 'All she does is spend money!' screamed up at me from the computer screen. I wasn't in love with my husband anymore. I did still love him and had planned to sacrifice my happiness to make sure he was taken care of until the end. Read more: L.A. Affairs: He looked hot in his tight jeans, boots and cowboy hat. Would he ask me to dance? Then he betrayed me and let me off the hook. He didn't cheat. He talked behind my back in ways that I felt dishonored me. Imagine reading your husband's emails (I'm not perfect) and finding long conversations between him and his daughter about you. This from the man you've been with for 25 years! I suppose I knew this day would come. Money was always the bane of our relationship. My husband would not have initiated divorce because it would have cost him too much. Did I spend? Yes, I suppose, but only to improve our home in Culver City, give us a luscious yard and a new paved driveway. And that's not to mention all the trips we took to fascinating places. I had done a lot for him. Surprised him with a bar mitzvah in Jerusalem, brought his "mathematical art" to life through art shows and social media and planned our busy social schedule. I moved to the Pico-Robertson area to be close to my niece and her three kids. Darkness consumed me, but my face was masked with perpetual smiles. How do you begin again at 71? Friends tried to guide me to dating sites, but I wasn't ready. I took refuge in my apartment with my dog, Murray, who kept me alive through the COVID-19 pandemic, depression and divorce. My life consisted of walking the dog, writing children's books and binge-watching Netflix nightly. Read more: L.A. Affairs: For years, I juggled co-parenting, dating and taking care of a family cat I didn't like Once the divorce was over, loneliness won out. I moved to a new city an hour outside of L.A. Male attention came from a 31-year-old gardener who brought me flowers every Tuesday. 'I'm old enough to be your grandmother,' I said. I was feeling the need for male energy, but not with this young man. So I turned to online dating. I scrolled down the list of all my likes on a dating site. One man caught my eye. He was Jewish, intelligent and had a dog named Erik. I sent him a like back. 'Can you give me your number so we can text?' he asked. What could it hurt? The next two weeks were a whirlwind. We were in a textationship. I felt so high I stopped eating. I lost six pounds in three days. Jay enchanted me with all the romantic things that he was going to do for me. He sent me love songs. I wasn't just beautiful; I was extremely beautiful and I shouldn't worry about being overweight, he told me. He wanted a soulmate and convinced me that we were meant to be. Blown away by our connection, we both realized bashert (or fate) had won out. Read more: L.A. Affairs: I grew up on Disney princesses and fairy tales. Was I ready for my own happily ever after? I was the happiest I had been in many years. Finally something was going to come easy for me. But I wasn't naive. Red flags started to pop up. Jay and I had barely spoken on the phone when he told me that he had to be in Washington, D.C. for three weeks to work on a military base. He wouldn't be able to video chat, and if he did, he could get fired. On a Friday morning, two weeks into our relationship, I texted, 'I'm sorry, but I can't invest anymore into this relationship until I see you.' He asked if I could Skype. (Oh, remember Skype?) Red flag. Why not FaceTime? I waited all day Saturday for him to call. Nothing. On Sunday morning, I blocked him on my phone. Murray and I headed to the ocean. On Monday, unable to text me, he emailed. Hope reared its head again. "How can you give up all we shared together?" he asked. 'I so want you to be true, Jay, but I still need to see your face," I replied. At 7 a.m. Monday, he called. In bed with no makeup on, we met on Google Meet. I loved the face on his profile, but I didn't think this face was the same one I saw on-screen. I asked him why he said he was a New York native on his profile when I knew he grew up in Sweden. He shrugged it off as a small embellishment. I fake smiled and asked him to say something to me in Swedish. He mumbled something that meant 'bright day." My intuition was on fire. The guy had to be a liar. Read more: L.A. Affairs: Oh, how my body wanted my pickleball partner! Then he opened his big mouth Was he grooming me to ask for money? Was he trying to feel important? Did he want to inflict harm? Later that day, he sent me an email. 'I told you I couldn't talk on video and that I'd be home soon enough, and we could be together. Now, they've found out that I made a video call and I could get fired. I'm not sure this was worth it. I'm angry you didn't believe me.' (He allegedly did secret work as an engineer for the Department of Defense.) I texted back: 'Goodbye, Jay.' 'Wow, goodbye,' he answered. I could've gone back into depression, but I was already out. I felt empowered. Catfished or not, I have to thank Jay — or whatever his name really is. He put the pep back in my step even if he didn't mean a word of it. Through the ping-pong of our conversations, my darkness ceased to be. I realized that I was capable of feeling again. Whatever it was that we meant to each other, Mr. Catfish managed to give me the very thing I was missing: Hope. The author is an actor, writer and producer living in Southern California with her dog Murray. L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@ You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here. Sign up for The Wild newsletter to get weekly insider tips on the best of our beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Vogue
25 minutes ago
- Vogue
The Maturing of Matcha: The New (Old) Wave of Matcha Sweeping the Country
Green is in: Matcha has become ubiquitous among the fashion set, millennials, and Gen Z—even my boomer mom is obsessed—with nearly every cafe offering it alongside coffee, and plenty of cafes dedicated solely to matcha. From national matcha-devoted chains like Cha Cha Matcha, Matcha Café Maiko, and Kyo Matcha, to nearly every coffee shop from Starbucks to Blue Bottle to even Dunkin' Donuts offering matcha lattes, it's safe to say matcha is firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist. Matcha is a vibrant green tea drink born in China and Japan thousands of years ago. It's made from grinding green tea leaves—which can be varying grades of quality—into a fine powder, which is then whisked with hot water to create a thick, frothy liquid. In many modern cafes around the world, it's combined with milk or an alternative milk to create a latte, and this is typically what you'll find in most cafes serving matcha in the U.S. But are you getting an authentic matcha at Dunkin' Donuts? Definitely not (it's green tea powder mixed with 32 grams of sugar, milk, and fruit pectin, according to their website). Even at most matcha-devoted places, your drink will likely be sweetened and watered down as a way to help cover up the bitter taste of lower-grade matcha. Over the last decade, in most of the U.S., matcha has become so far removed from its roots that it has become a coffee alternative at best and a TikTok trend at worst. And while these drinks might be tasty, if you're looking for authentic, unadulterated matcha, it has been harder to find in the U.S.—until now. While chains like Cha Cha Matcha, which opened in New York City in 2016 and has expanded to seven New York City and four Los Angeles locations, show no signs of slowing down, there has been a recent spate of more authentic matcha cafes utilizing extremely high-quality matcha unadulterated by sugar and other mix-ins. These boutique shops typically partner with a specific farm in Japan or Korea for sourcing, as opposed to the Japanese corporate distributors that the larger chains use. But what exactly is the difference between a matcha latte from Starbucks and a so-called authentic matcha? We checked in with Darla Murray, the co-founder of Make, a premium matcha brand selling hand-selected tea direct to consumers.
