He saw a girl begging on the sidewalk and somehow couldn’t get her face out of his mind. He had to know her story.
Wealthy businessman Roger Landers was often annoyed by the sight of the homeless begging on the street outside his office building. There seemed to be more and more of them each year, he reflected.
As he passed a young woman huddled against a wall, a kindly soul dropped a coin in her cup. The woman looked up and smiled at her benefactor and that smile pierced Roger to the heart. In one second, that huddled anonymous annoyance became a lovely radiant woman.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
Roger walked into the building and that moment when the girl’s face was transformed by her smile replayed over and over in his mind. He found himself wondering who she was, what had driven her to live in the pitiless streets of L.A.?
For the rest of the week, Roger found himself almost obsessed by the young homeless woman. He watched her surreptitiously, and once when he dropped a coin in her cup, watched that miraculous transformation at close quarters.
Love can sometimes lurk in the most unexpected places.
He found himself thinking about her, inventing stories about her, little fantasies in which he discovered she was really a reporter writing about homelessness at close hand, or a deeply committed actress preparing for a role…
Finally, on Friday afternoon, after he wrapped his work for the day and dismissed his employees, Roger did what he’d been longing to do all week. He walked up to the girl sitting on the sidewalk and talked to her.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
“Hi,” he said awkwardly. “Would it be okay if I bought you a cup of coffee? You look really cold.” The girl lifted up her face and smiled at him.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I’d like that.” Roger was struck by her low educated voice and her grace as she got to her feet. She was tiny, he realized, a petite 5′ 3″ next to his towering 6′ 2″.
He walked her to a nearby coffee shop and ordered her hot food to go with her coffee. Once again Roger was surprised by her delicate gestures, her manners. This was an educated girl. How had she ended up on the streets?
When Roger saw color flood back into the girl’s face after she finished her hot soup, her grilled sandwich, and her coffee, he asked her exactly that. “How did this happen to you? Living on the streets?”
The girl looked him straight in the eye. A wry smile twisted her lips. “I was stupid, and trusting,” she said. “It’s not an original story. I was in love with this boy in my hometown — Idaho — if you can believe it.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
“My parents disapproved of him, which only made him even more romantic and attractive to me… To cut a long story short, he convinced me to withdraw my college funds and run away with him to L.A. He was going to be a movie star, and I’d be a screenwriter…”
Roger shook his head sadly. “A lot of people come out here every year, less than a handful make it!” he commented.
“Well, I’ll never know.” A tinge of bitterness colored the girl’s voice. “The first night in L.A., we booked into a motel. When I woke up in the morning Kevin was gone, so was my money and everything I had.”
Roger gasped. “Did you go to the police? Call your family?” The girl was shaking her head, tears in her eyes.
“I was too ashamed. I made a deal with the motel manager. She let me sleep in the storeroom and I cleaned the rooms. Some of the guests gave me tips, and I managed to eat. But then her husband started trying…” The girl shook her head. “You know how it is. I left the motel and ended up here, on the streets.”
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pixabay
“What’s your name?” Roger asked gently.
“Emma,” the girl said with one of those radiant smiles. “Emma Sinclair from Preston, Idaho!”
“Well, Emma Sinclair from Preston, Idaho,” Roger smiled back. “I’m Roger Landers from Los Angeles, California, and I’m sending you home.”
Roger took Emma into a nearby mall and he bought her several outfits and a suitcase. He waited at the food court while she changed and came out of the restroom transformed.
He drove her to the bus station and bought her a bus ticket home. He tucked a $100 bill in her hand. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t let any more charming rascals talk you into coming to L.A., OK?”
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
Emma was crying and smiling through her tears. She reached up and gave Roger a hug. “Thank you, thank you, and God bless you!”
Roger watched her board the bus with a sinking feeling in his heart. Why did he feel that this was a mistake? He wanted to run after that bus, beg Emma to stay… What was happening to him?
That night, Roger realized that the petite waif with the glowing smile had stolen his heart. “If I let her go, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life!” he told himself. “She’s special, and I love her.”
Two days later, Roger was driving into Preston, Idaho. He stopped at the police station and asked where he could find Emma Sinclair. “Emma?” asked one of the deputies suspiciously. “What do you want with Emma?”
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
Roger blushed. “Well, you see, I met her in LA, and I wanted to see if she was alright…”
The deputy looked him up and down. “You can find Emma at her mom’s laundromat, two doors down. I’m coming with you. I don’t want any more trouble for Emma!”
Roger’s heart was beating fast as he walked into the laundromat and saw Emma. She looked up and her face lit up. At that moment, Roger knew she had been feeling the same way: they belonged together!
So just three weeks after she returned home, Emma headed back to LA once again, but this time she was with a man who loved and cherished her. By the end of the year, Roger and Emma were married, and she became involved in a program to help runaways find their way home.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Unsplash
What can we learn from this story?
- Helping others can be a transformative experience. Roger helped Emma, and in the process, he found his own way to life-long happiness.
- Love can sometimes lurk in the most unexpected places. Roger found love with a homeless waif when everyone expected him to marry a socialite.
Little girl was abandoned by dad who said she was ‘dead’ to him – now she’s a famous actress
At the pinnacle of their careers, renowned musician and legendary actress Goldie Hawn met in 1975.
On a first-class flight from New York to Los Angeles, the two happened to cross paths, and they clicked right away.
The musician was already well-known in the music industry, having shared stages with The Beach Boys, The Osmonds, and The Monkees. He was a member of The Hudson Brothers. Apart from his musical career, he had appearances in TV series and movies, including the cult favorite Hysterical.
The musician recalled their first meeting and said there was instant electricity. The allure was immediate. That evening, I asked her to supper, and that was it,” he revealed. Their physical bond was a major factor in their relationship’s rapid growth.
The level of intimacy was astounding. The [intimacy] was always fantastic, even when everything else in the relationship went south,” he continued, as reported by the Daily Mail. Even while their relationship was not without its ups and downs, there were times when it felt like they were moving forward.
In 1976, while Goldie was expecting their first child, a son, the couple were married. But there were some difficulties during the delivery of their baby. He was diagnosed with meconium aspiration, a potentially fatal illness where a baby inhales meconium-contaminated amniotic fluid, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 20: BOTTOMLINE Photo of Bill HUDSON, w/ Goldie Hawn (Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)
The couple was greatly concerned when the newborn was placed in isolation for three days following delivery. “Goldie and I were ecstatic,” the performer recalled. “She was really sick, and I’d go from her bedside to the neonatal intensive care unit,” he added in his explanation. It was the physicians’ opinion that [son’s name] would not survive. However, he survived, and from that point on, he became our priceless miracle.
The couple welcomed a girl as their second child in 1979, three years after the first. The foursome shared a number of wonderful years together before the musician’s discovery that Goldie had been unfaithful in 1981 brought an untimely end to their marriage. The musician’s longing for a conventional marriage ran counter to Goldie’s beliefs of commitment.
He told the Daily Mail, “Goldie was having affairs, and pretty much on our wedding night, she told me that she wanted an open marriage, that she couldn’t imagine being faithful to one man for the rest of her life.” “I desired a conventional union, but Goldie was unsatisfactory. I eventually relocated.
In 1983, following their breakup, Goldie started dating actor Kurt Russell. They had first connected on set of Swing Shift, but their love life didn’t take off until they reunited after meeting again while filming The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1968. Three years into their relationship, in 1986, Wyatt Russell, their son, was born.
Bringing their families together turned out to be a big adjustment. “For me, it felt like such a big moment because it was like, ‘My mom is madly in love with this guy,’” Goldie’s daughter recounted. “And I was meeting his son [Boston], so I thought, ‘Does this mean that this is my brother?’” she continued. For someone so young, it was a lot to handle.
Following their parents’ divorce, Goldie’s children from her first marriage experienced sentiments of abandonment. Her son told her about the way their biological father gradually cut himself off from them. In response to a contentious Father’s Day post honoring Kurt, he stated, “It really doesn’t matter which one of these men is my father.” I became the man I am now when my father intervened when I was six years old.
Kurt assuming the position of father figure is a memory that both siblings cherish. Even though they still don’t get along with their real father Bill, they frequently thank Kurt for his commitment.
Bill, meanwhile, has publicly expressed his sense of betrayal and charged Goldie with “poisoning” their kids against him. According to Hello!, despite their tension, Kate and Oliver are committed to moving past their past and keeping a good attitude on the future.
Oliver made the public knowledge of their tense relationship in 2015 when he shared a contentious Father’s Day message on social media. He posted a photo of Kate, Bill, and himself from the past with the message, “Happy abandonment day… @katehudson.”
“Oliver could have picked up the phone and called me, but he hasn’t,” said Bill, who was incensed by the post, in an interview. He obviously planned this out; he released the image on Father’s Day, knowing full well that it would hurt the most people.
Bill continued by asserting that Oliver had been successful in his attempt to remove him from their life. Tension increased when Kate wrote her own homage to Kurt, following Oliver’s example and only serving to exacerbate the fallout.
During her appearance on Howard Stern’s show, Kate talked about how Kurt was the father that was there for her through the trying and trying times. “I would ask them to stop using the Hudson name [because] they are no longer a part of my life,” Bill responded, as reported by the Daily Mail.
He went on to say, “I now consider Oliver and Kate to be dead; their Instagram post was a wicked, brutal, and deliberate attack. Even though they are still alive, I am grieving for their loss. After that, Bill made the decision, per the Daily Mail article, to get rid of all of Kate and Oliver’s childhood items from his house.
Kurt has accepted his duty as a grandfather to Kate and Oliver’s children despite the distance between him and his older children.
Kate and Oliver have moved on and chosen to concentrate on the relationships they have developed with their stepfather, Kurt, but Bill still harbors animosity.
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