This year’s Unsung Heroes are:  (top row, from left) Marvin Beckerman, Toddy Goldman, Judy and Dr. Bob Hellman and Sanford “Sandy” Jaffe; (bottom row, from left) Sam Klein, Kathy Lebedun, Buddy Lebman, Neil Marglous and Myra Rosenthal. Not pictured...

Sometimes, Zubaida Ibrahim knows she is up against an overwhelming image problem, but that challenge only makes her double her resolve.A Muslim woman who was born in Pakistan and has lived in the United States 42 years, Ibrahim works virtually every day...

Asking how many dogs someone has is usually a simple enough question.But not for Derek Cohn.“Today, we have five,” said Cohn. “It’s always a changing number.”That’s because Cohn takes in foster dogs, as part of a program through Stray Rescue...

Rick Rovak was doing well in life. His kids went to college. His family was comfortable and his job as a high-powered sales executive in the shoe industry paid very well.Then he found himself having dinner one night with friends at a fashionable Beverly...

For some, membership in the Boy Scouts is a childhood adventure that gives them memories for a lifetime. But for those like Sandy “Bozo” Silverstein, the Boy Scouts are lifetime. After all, he’s been involved with them for the better part of 80...

Helping the hungry is more than a mitzvah project for teenagers Nate Noss, Will Hopkins, and Sam Pepose. It’s a mission. With one in eight people in the greater St Louis area dependent on food pantries and homeless shelters for their daily meals, the...

Framed by the Gateway Arch and a commanding view of the Mississippi from his 26th story window overlooking downtown St. Louis, the world can seem a small place.Yet still, Josh Goldman knows that everything outside that window is based on a very big concept,...

Rita Swiener is one of those people who always seems to know what she wants. Even as a six-year-old growing up in the slums of Pittsburgh, she was certain of which gifts she hoped Hanukkah would bring at the orphanage where she lived. “I said I wanted...

Some people retire to get away from work. Others seek work out after leaving their jobs. Herb Eissman is definitely the latter.“I just like to be helpful to people,” he said.It’s something the 82-year-old native of Neosho, Mo. proves every weekday...

Had her dad stayed in Hollywood, once he passed his screen test, a gaping hole might have been detected, years later, in the fund-raising and religious worlds here. But since Depression-era studios had little money for beefing up raw talent, the Goldenbergs...

Crossing a Paris street to go to a bakery, a young child was hit by a car driven by a Nazi. “It was like I was a piece of paper,” the French-born Rachel Goldman Miller recalls. “He never stopped.”During the German occupation of France in World...

Young violinist Hava Polinsky performs the first movement of Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 during the Unsung Heroes event last week, held by the Jewish Light at the JCC. Close to 300 people attended the event, which recog-nized the Light’s nine ‘Unsung...