Star Tribune
These Rochester teens wanted to help families like theirs. Now Congress is recognizing their new app.
ROCHESTER – In a city this big, it can be tough to find the right resources for Muslim refugees.
Where’s the nearest halal restaurant? What direction is east? Where can non-English speakers find legal help or mental health resources?
It drove a group of current and former Rochester students from Century and John Marshall high schools to create an online app to assist newcomers to the area. Their app, Merhaba, was one of this year’s Congressional App Challenge finalists.
“We were working on something that we knew was novel, that could help people,” said Ibraheem Razouki, now a senior at Lamar High School in Houston, Texas.
Razouki moved to Houston after attending middle school in Rochester, where his friends Logan Nguyen Hammel, Fahad Albadri and Scott Anderson still live. The group is a part of AIM to AID, a youth-led nonprofit that Razouki co-founded in 2022 to help immigrant families in Houston and Rochester.
AIM to AID has raised more than $50,000 so far and includes a clothing line called Crescentwear created by Albadri and Nguyen Hammel. The nonprofit is entirely run by high schoolers and has expanded into chapters across the United States, Canada and six other countries.
Merhaba grew out of the group’s efforts to assist newcomers in the U.S. Most members of the group are either children of immigrants or immigrants themselves who knew how their own families struggled in the community.
Razouki said he was born in Iraq but can identify with the same sort of issues Rochester’s predominantly Somali Muslim community faces. Finding good places to eat that accommodate Muslim practices, known as halal, spurred the group’s initial talks.
“We wanted to create an interactive map where you could scroll through various areas,” Nguyen Hammel said. “You could scroll through ratings and go through stores or restaurants.”
The students spent much of 2023 working on the app, which Anderson described as sort of a tailored Google Maps. By the time they entered the app in the Congressional App Challenge last fall, it had grown into a one-stop-shop for resources that even includes a built-in Arabic-to-English translator.
“It was something that we hadn’t really done before,” Nguyen Hammel said. “It’s something that not many high schoolers do. We just dove right into it to research what kind of platforms we could put it on, design a usable interface … researching everything to put all the puzzle pieces together.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad picked Merhaba to represent southern Minnesota’s entry in the challenge, one of almost 400 chosen by members of Congress this year out of about 3,700 entries. The group flew to Washington, D.C., this week as part of a conference honoring the 2023 challenge winners.
Nguyen Hammel said the win was a “really big surprise,” comparing it to winning a state championship. Anderson said he was just happy the group got the project done on time.
“Winning the competition was an extra bonus at that point,” he said.
Merhaba soon will be available to download in Rochester and Houston, but the students want to keep growing the application even as they start college in the fall. They’re hoping other young programmers across Minnesota and beyond will help expand Merhaba, while obtaining feedback from initial users to improve the app’s experience. The students even dream of the app going international one day.
“There’s no application that really aims to improve the global migrant crisis,” Razouki said. “It may seem very ambitious, but I feel like why should we stop at Minnesota, Houston and the U.S. when this is a global issue?”
The total number of people who were hospitalized as a result of the contaminated pizza and the extent of the injuries were not immediately clear. The health department did not immediately respond to a question seeking that information. But the department said it had “received dozens of reports” from people feeling affected and alluded to multiple people having been sent to the hospital.
“Possible THC-related symptoms include dizziness, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, nausea, vomiting, anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations, short term memory impacts, time distortion, and sleepiness,” the department said. “Keep in mind each person’s reaction may be different, and the concentration of THC in the pizza can vary by piece.”
The comments on Famous Yeti’s social media posts were overwhelmingly positive. Many people expressed appreciation for the business’ openness about its mistake and expression of regret. A few customers also — possibly in jest — saw the news as even more reason to patronize the restaurant.
“When i come and I wink twice,” one commenter wrote, “I want that pizza alright lol.”
DuBois also told the court about a talk she had with Kingsbury in mid-March 2023, a few weeks before Kingsbury went missing. Kingsbury had planned to leave Fravel by then, but she told DuBois that Fravel had said “she would not be leaving with his kids,” according to DuBois.
In a meeting at a hotel near Mayo around the same time, DuBois said she noticed a reddish mark around Kingsbury’s neck. DuBois asked Kingsbury if there was anything Kingsbury needed and later provided her with some concealer so others wouldn’t notice.
“(Kingsbury) said she was figuring out a plan so that it didn’t happen again,” DuBois said.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Zach Bauer pointed out that DuBois, Scott and Kolka all became familiar with each other after Kingsbury’s disappearance, implying their conversations about the case may have led them to become biased against Fravel.
Bauer challenged Kolka on how she stored items she took from Kingsbury’s house in April 2023, when Kingsbury was still considered missing. Kolka turned over to law enforcement bedsheets that came from Kingsbury’s house after Kingsbury’s body was found in June 2023, but Bauer pointed out those items, as well as other evidence law enforcement examined at Kolka’s house, wasn’t properly secured.
“Anybody could have come through the house at that time,” he said during questions.
A feud between two teenagers in Willmar over the weekend has left one wounded and the other charged with attempted murder.
Carsten Ronald Tallman, 18, of Willmar was charged Tuesday with attempted second-degree murder, drive-by shooting toward a vehicle, second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and two other felony charges, according to a criminal complaint.
He was in custody at the Kandiyohi County jail on Wednesday morning. The victim has been released from the hospital, Willmar Police Capt. Michael Anderson said in an email Wednesday morning.
According to the criminal complaint:
Police received a report of 10 possible gunshots early Sunday near Eagle Ridge Drive north of Willmar.
Shortly after, CentraCare Rice Memorial Hospital reported a gunshot victim, a juvenile who said he had been shot in the back as he was driving home from a party. The teen said a car had followed him and crashed into this vehicle, and that he had been trying to get away.
Police said they knew Tallman and the victim had been having a disagreement. When they went to Tallman’s home, they said they found a red Chevrolet Impala with a still-warm engine and a damaged headlight.
Tallman told police that he had been sleeping, had not left his house in days, and had not driven the red Impala that day. But police said Tallmans’ girlfriend told them that he had woken her and told her he had hit a deer that night. They also said that Tallman’s cousin told officers he saw him leave the house.
