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Organizations recount impact KAT had on the community
Karl-Anthony Towns volunteered with several organizations over his nine-year career in Minnesota.
MINNEAPOLIS — It’s easy to see the impact Karl-Anthony Towns had on the basketball court, but what he did off it might not be as obvious.
In just his second season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, prepping Thanksgiving dinner for families in need in 2017, Towns understood how he could be a catalyst for change.
“Whatever we do on the court is what we do on the court, but a true man’s legacy is left by the effect he does on the community,” he said at the time. “I feel I can do more off the court than on it.”
He’s been living by that statement ever since, organizing a winter coat drive for kids and teenagers who don’t have jackets, fundraising for the Boys & Girls Club Twin Cities, helping formerly incarcerated people restore their right to vote, giving to families in need, and spending time with kids who are ill.
“The thing that I like about KAT, he shows up, he’s personal, he’s caring, and he’s made a really big impact on HopeKids and he’ll be deeply missed,” said Executive Director of HopeKids Minnesota Brian Anderson.
HopeKids helps children who have cancer or other life-threatening medical conditions along with their families.
“Every Christmas he would invite 100 people out to the Timberwolves facility, and we would go into the theater that they have, and we would watch a movie, a kid’s movie, and sometimes he would actually sit there and watch the movie in entirety with our families. It was pretty cool,” he said.
Anderson said he’s been hosting a Christmas party for HopeKids since 2018. He said KAT has made a big impact on their kids and has given them hope.
“The timeout that he took for people really showed that he cared makes a huge difference,” he said. “We’re going to miss him a lot.”
He isn’t sure if their relationship will continue, but he’s hopeful Towns will stop by when the New York Knicks come to Minneapolis in December.
Kai Glinsek will also miss KAT, but he’ll never forget how he helped his family through a hard time. Glinsek’s mother had pancreatic cancer, and the medical bills were piling up. The family started to a GoFundMe to help, but they were thousands of dollars short, until KAT heard about it.
“He changed my family’s life,” he said. “What KAT did for me and my family, I’ll never forget it. I’m never not going to be a KAT fan.”
Glinsek’s mother has passed away, but Towns got them to their goal, donating thousands of dollars.
“That meant the world to us and KAT didn’t want any recognition for it, he just did it. I believe it comes from the struggles he’s had,” he said.
He’ll never not root for KAT, and hope when people drive by Parkway Pizza in Northeast Minneapolis they’ll honk if they love KAT, too.
The Norman family was in Asheville, North Carolina to celebrate a birthday and decided to drive back to Minnesota.
EAGAN, Minn. — The destruction from Hurricane Helene is unimaginable.
More than 130 are dead and hundreds more are missing. Some cities are now completely isolated, making delivery of even basic supplies and communication nearly impossible.
One of the hardest hit towns, some 600 miles from where the storm made landfall, is the popular Asheville, North Carolina.
A local family, from Eagan, happened to be there visiting to celebrate their uncle’s 90th birthday. But by Saturday, siblings Judy, Jim and Joyce decided to drive back to Minnesota.
“After we got in overnight, the storm hit and sometime around 3 a.m., we lost electricity,” said Judy Hepworth. “The water stopped working in the afternoon and that’s when we realized things were not going to get better.”
RELATED: Here’s how Helene and other storms dumped a whopping 40 trillion gallons of rain on the South
They rented a mini-van, but now they’re unsure how to return it. Joyce Norman said the company is adamant they have to return it in Asheville.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Norman. “I’m baffled and we had to use it.”
The storm dropped as much as two feet of rain in North Carolina alone. The disaster, though, is spread across at least five other states.
“In the morning, the gas station was underwater,” said Norman.
“And then every way we went, there were trees down,” said Hepworth.
“It was just focus, we just got to get out of here,” said their brother, Jim Norman. “We were driving the wrong way, we were driving straight east, but we knew there was only one way out to the east from where we were.”
The treacherous journey took them on mountain roads and in the more vulnerable valleys with few options to escape. The remnants of the hurricane interacted with the higher elevations and cooler temperatures which meant more rain.
“We went up and over a hill and all of our phones pinged and came back on,” said Hepworth. “That was like, we felt like we had reached safety.”
Only now, are they starting to process the ordeal.
“We sat around and we began sharing because we held it in because we had to act as a team to get out of there,” said Jim.
The family recognizes they are lucky to be alive and are thankful they were able to escape.
Nearly 2 million people are still without power across the region, but FEMA is now on the ground and helping deliver water and ready-to-eat meals in particular.
MINNEAPOLIS — Passengers of the light rail are having their travel paused Monday evening after all the trains stopped operating.
Metro Transit posted to social media saying the trains stopped due to “technical issues.” At this time, some buses are running on the blue and green line routes in the trains’ place.
“All trains are holding in place at this time,” the social media post said.
It’s unclear when exactly trains will be running again. Metro Transit said service is suspended until “late today.”
This is a developing story, KARE 11 will update with more information as it becomes available.
Troubles with Ticketmaster is something Swifties know “All Too Well” but now the highly coveted tickets they scored are getting stolen.
MINNEAPOLIS — Troubles with Ticketmaster is something Swifties know “All Too Well,” but more and more fans are reporting their tickets to Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour are getting stolen from cyberhackers.
Swift is about to start her final U.S. leg of the tour, but the reports of tickets being stolen through cyber hacks on individual fan’s Ticketmaster accounts stem back months. However, the problem is growing.
“I woke up to an email that my tickets had been transferred out of my account to a name that I was not familiar with,” Swift fan, Livi Gislason said.
Gislason and her sister Emma Shepley were ecstatic to land the highly coveted tickets to Swift’s final US stop in Indianapolis until they were transferred to someone’s account she doesn’t know on Sept. 22. The concert would be there first time seeing each other in four months. Both are devastated to not only miss out on the concert, but the “once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Gislason and her sister called Ticketmasters customer service line 30 times that day. They didn’t get through to a representative until the 30th phone call and were told someone would reach out to then in 48 hours. Once that time passed and no one contacted them, they called back and were told by a Ticketmaster representative that someone would get back to them in 3-5 business days.
Taylor Swift’s record breaking #ErasTour tickets are sacred.
The tickets expensive.
The tickets hard to come by.
And the tickets are getting stolen from #swifties accounts on #Ticketmaster by hackers.
(🧵)
— Morgan Wolfe (@MorganWolfeNews) September 30, 2024
“We have jobs like I don’t need to take on a secondhand job trying to track down the tickets I rightfully bought,” Emma said.
Gislason questions whether Ticketmaster’s data breach has led to fans experience the fraudulent ticket transfers. She says she didn’t learn of the breach until her tickets were stolen.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson told KARE 11’s Morgan Wolfe that passwords to accounts weren’t exposed. The spokesperson said:
“Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs. Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate and successfully return tickets for fans. The top way fans can protect themselves is setting a strong unique password for all accounts – especially for their personal email which is where we often see security issues originate. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable, so Ticketmaster is constantly investing in new security enhancements to safeguard fans.”
On their website, Ticketmaster says if your tickets are lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed, contact Fan Support and their team will be happy to help. Make sure you have your order number or the card you used to buy the tickets readily available.
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is weighing in on the latest Ticketmaster development.
“Ticketmaster needs to make these fans whole. It’s unacceptable that fans who bought tickets are now seeing their tickets fraudulently transferred out of their accounts,” said Sen. Klobuchar. “There is a reason the Justice Department has sued Ticketmaster to better protect customers following my hearing. We need to pass my bipartisan Fans First Bill and get this case resolved to stop consumers from being ripped off.”
Cyber security experts recommend people change their passwords regularly, and turn on two-way authentication services to make it more challenging for bad actors to gain access to your accounts.
