The Associated Press
Navy Lt. Shane Osborn, the naval officer from Whidbey Island who safely landed a crippled spy plane in China, plans to remain in the Navy, but he's also opening an all-season patio enclosures business in Nebraska.

Whidbey Island hero buys a business

Olympian news services

Originally published Monday, March 18, 2002

NORFOLK, Neb. -- Navy Lt. Shane Osborn, who safely landed a crippled spy plane in China, is adding a less heart-pounding job to his resume -- business owner.

Osborn plans to remain in the Navy, but he's opening an all-season patio enclosures business in his hometown of Norfolk.

He will own the Three Seasons and 4 store, which his mother, Diana, will manage. His father, Doug, owns two of the stores in South Dakota, and Shane Osborn has played an active role in the company as vice president.

Osborn was commander of a Navy EP-3E Aries II aircraft that collided with a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea in April. After landing on China's Hainan island, Osborn and his crew of 23 were detained by the Chinese government for 11 days.

Osborn, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station near Oak Harbor, was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal for Heroism.

VAIL, Colo. -- Christopher Reeve might not be walking on his 50th birthday in September as he once promised, but he isn't giving up hope.

When he's not working on his second book, Reeve is lobbying to lift restrictions on stem cell research that he believes could lead to a cure to his paralysis, and exercising almost daily.

"There will be a cure. It is very important for me to stay in the best possible condition to be prepared," he said in an interview at a weekend fund-raising event for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.

Since the fall from a horse that injured his spinal cord, Reeve has become an advocate of increased funding for a cure for paralysis. He also has driven himself, riding a bike 10 miles a day three times a week while using electrical stimulation to move his legs.

LOS ANGELES -- Broadcast journalist Linda Ellerbee figured she'd find devastation when she visited Afghanistan for her news show for children.

What she didn't expect to find was that children themselves don't act devastated at all.

"You see kids in what looks like a hopeless situation, and yet all we found was hope," said Ellerbee, taking a break from editing the long-running show. "I kept asking myself, 'How can this be? Don't they know how hopeless this is?' ''

"Faces of Hope: The Kids of Afghanistan" was on Sunday's schedule on the Nickelodeon cable network.

Ellerbee found children who have managed to turn burned-out helicopters and bomb craters into makeshift playgrounds, to use sticks as both bats and balls for pickup games of baseball, and who, like children everywhere, find joy in a snowball fight.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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