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Local mom says two-year-old is bullied for her looks. Now, she’s asking parents to help end bullying against kids with disabilities.
Now, at two years old, Mirlee Janice Ramirez and her beautiful smile show how far they’ve come since KENS 5’s Sarah Forgany first interviewed her mother in 2022.
SAN ANTONIO — Two years of raising a child with a rare genetic disorder has given Flor Ramirez a unique perspective.
Flor is a former KENS 5 employee, and as colleagues, we have helped raise awareness of her daughter, Mirlee’s, condition, Apert Syndrome. It’s a condition that causes the fusion of bones in the skull, hands and feet.
Now, at two years old, Mirlee Janice Ramirez and her beautiful smile show how far they’ve come since KENS 5’s Sarah Forgany first interviewed her mother in 2022.
“She has excelled and met goals. She’s running. She’s playing. She’s balancing herself,” Ramirez said.
Mirlee was an infant two years ago and Flor was trying to figure out how to be a new mom and how to navigate the surprise of baby’s disabilities.
“So many fears…what the healing process is going to look like, because as she gets older, it changes,” Ramirez said.
Little Mirlee has gone through seven surgeries in her young life and receives continual therapy from Children’s Rehabilitation Institute TeletonUSA (CRIT).
Occupational Therapist Marites Navarro Graves says Mirlee has made incredible progress.
“She can move her arms, but also feeding, eating so she can hold her spoon better,” Navarro says.
Navarro has more than 20 years experience and has been with CRIT since it first opened in 2014, serving only a few families at that time.
“Our populations are mostly with cerebral palsy, neurological musculoskeletal disorders,” Navarro said.
The organization now serves over 350 patients all over the U.S.
“We serve the whole family, not only the patient itself, because when you have a disability at home, it has an impact on the whole family,” Ana Hernandez, CRIT Business Development Manager, said. “We see miracles everyday happening here in all types of therapies.”
Ramirez considers her daughter one of those miracles. But, outside of the warm, welcoming and colorful walls of the CRIT facility, Ramirez has a much different experience.
She says she has endured bullying in public places from both kids and adults and doesn’t feel comfortable going to the playground.
“Now that she’s growing and she’s getting older, she’s more aware of what’s going on,” Ramirez said. “It’s very difficult as a mom to see your daughter go through that.”
Ramirez says she understands differences in perspectives and says she welcomes adults and children to walk up and ask her questions, instead of just staring.
“Sometimes it may seem a little uncomfortable on both parties but it helps us to educate children,” Ramirez said.
In the meantime, Ramirez says her daughter is breaking barriers and conquering new skills every day.
“I never thought that I’d see my daughter riding a bike ever. She’s having the best time of her life… to her, that is such a big accomplishment.”
The Trump and Harris campaigns both hosted news conferences ahead of Walz-Vance rhetorical clash.
MINNEAPOLIS — The Trump Campaign Monday hosted a national conference call featuring several Minnesotans ahead of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate. The Harris Campaign, for its part, held a press conference to punctuate reproductive rights.
Gov. Walz will face off with Ohio Sen. JD Vance in the CBS Studios in New York Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. for what will most likely be their only meeting before Election Day.
Congressman Tom Emmer, the Republican House Majority Whip, told reporters Walz isn’t the good-natured everyman that he comes across as in his campaign rallies. Emmer, who played Walz in debate rehearsals with Vance, said Walz is far more liberal than he’d have you believe.
“He’s a good debater. He will stand there, and he lies with conviction,” Emmer told reporters. “And he has little mannerism, where it’s just, ‘Hey, I’m the nice guy.’ But he’s not nice at all.”
Trump’s senior campaign adviser Jason Miller cautioned that Vance is not as experienced in debates as Walz, who has been running for elected office and winning consistently since 2006.
“Tim Walz is very good in debates. Really good. He’s been a politician for 20 years,” Miller said.
“He’s not going to be the wildly, gesticulating, effeminate caricature we see at rallies pointing to Kamala Harris and dancing about on the stage. Walz is going to be buttoned up. He’ll be ready to defend his own radical left record in Minnesota.”
Miller predicted that Vance will hammer away at Walz over the spike in illegal immigration during the Biden-Harris years and will highlight violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
“What Kamala Harris has done has turned every community in the United States into a border community. Nobody is safe anymore.”
The Harris campaign, by contrast, kept the focus on reproductive rights and fertility issues. State lawmakers and abortion rights advocates called out Vance for previous statements that he’d support an abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest.
“Trump and Vance have a plan to give Trump unprecedented, unchecked power to roll back reproductive rights, raise the cost for middle class families and threaten our democracy,” Sen. Erin Maye Quade, an Apple Valley Democrat, told reporters.
“Now, more than one in three women across the country live under an abortion ban. Women are being turned away from emergency rooms begging for care. Doctors are facing the threat of jail time for doing their jobs.”
The event, at Frogtown Community Center, featured women who had needed abortions for medical reasons.
“The only reason I have my three beautiful boys today is because I had an abortion. Without it I might not have a uterus, and I might not have my family,” Tippy Amundson said.
During her first pregnancy she learned at 20 weeks that her baby would not be viable after birth but would pose a health risk to her if she carried it to term.
DFL Rep. Kaohly Her of St. Paul revealed she too required an abortion earlier in her life.
“I myself have had an abortion after suffering an ectopic pregnancy. I found my way to a reproductive health clinic where I got the medical care I needed to save my life.”
During the Trump Campaign’s conference call, national reporters also heard from Tom Behrends, who served with Walz in the Minnesota National Guard and has claimed — without proof — that Walz retired after learning their unit would be deployed to Iraq.
“When the nation called, Tim Walz hung up and ran the other way.”
The National Guard’s official records conflict with Behrend’s account. A Guard spokesperson said that Walz left in May 2005 — two months before his unit received a special alert about a possible deployment and three months before receiving it received a mobilization order.
“The Minnesota National Guard can confirm the 1-125 Field Artillery Battalion received an alert order on July 14, 2005. An alert order is a notification for possible mobilization. The unit received a mobilization order on Aug. 14, 2005,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé told KARE.
“The Minnesota National Guard confirms Governor Timothy James Walz served from April 8, 1981, to May 16, 2005.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Behrends appeared in the Trump Campaign’s event indicates Vance will confront Walz about the timing of his retirement from the military.
A spokesperson with the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner confirmed that a man bought a guitar that had been signed by Swift and destroyed it.
WAXAHACHIE, Texas — A North Texas man is going viral for taking a hammer to a guitar signed by Taylor Swift.
A video that’s now been reposted across several social media platforms shows a North Texas man grabbing a guitar decorated in the style of the superstar’s Eras Tour and smashing it with a hammer that was handed to him by one of the men helping the auctioneer.
“I see the guy grab a hammer off the stage,” JD Cobb, who shot the video, told WFAA. “When I started video-ing it, I thought it was a joke.”
Cobb shot the video at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas, Saturday night. A spokesperson with the event confirmed to WFAA that the guitar was signed by Swift, and the man bought the guitar for around $4,000.
The spokesperson claimed there was no malice behind the smashing, though he did hint at the fact it had something to do with Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. They also confirmed that Taylor Swift has never used the guitar.
“It has been surprising to me how big of a deal people are making it out to be. It wasn’t meant to be mean or malicious,” Ellis County Wild Game spokesperson Craig Meier told WFAA. “He was just making a lighthearted statement showing disapproval of people in the entertainment industry trying to influence politics.”
Swifties online were critical of the decision to smash the guitar.
Some claimed it was immature, others used much harsher words. Many, though, cited the fact the $4,000 he spent could have gone to charity, and, in the end, it did. The proceeds for the dinner went to the Future Farmers of America.
“It was just a funny thing that happened at our annual event. The crowd thought it was hilarious,” Meier said in a statement. “The important thing is that 100% of the money raised goes directly to local youth and agricultural education programs. At the end of the day, the kids win and will benefit from this.”
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.
Survivor describes getting stranded on mountain by Helene during bachelorette party
Eye Opener: Israeli troops cross into Lebanon
Here’s how Hurricane Helene brought “biblical devastation” to western North Carolina in a near “worst-case scenario”
Survivor describes getting stranded on mountain by Helene during bachelorette party
Eye Opener: Israeli troops cross into Lebanon