This show originally aired on June 29, 2019. For this special edition of Sound Effect, the theme is “Small Miracles,” tales from our live storytelling event. Host Gabriel Spitzer recounts his brush with death after years of humiliation in swim class. Ty Reed recalls how a random encounter saved his life after he fell into homelessness and addiction. Cindy Healy is moved to tears seeing a special spacecraft in a Matt Damon movie. Queen Mae Butters remembers a powerful friendship formed at the end

This story originally aired on June 29, 2019. Queen Mae Butters was panting her way up six flights of stairs, just about ready to turn around and find someone else to take the job. "Then I hear Rose's twangy New York accent encourage me from above: 'You're going to make it nurse! You're almost here! Keep climbing!'" Butters said.

This story originally aired on June 29, 2019. It’s 1985 — think New Coke and “We Are the World” — and little 8-year-old Gabe is shivering on the tile floor next to Jewish Community Center swimming pool in Canton, Ohio. I’d just wrapped up my “Advanced Beginners” swim class, and was lined up with the other kids awaiting our Red Cross cards. That card would be my ticket to the next class: Intermediate. The instructor came down the line and, when she handed me my card, it did not say “Intermediate”

This story originally aired on June 29, 2019. By his own account, Ty Reed is gainfully employed, has the love of his friends and family, and is a productive member of society. But less than five years ago, he was a homeless drug addict and petty criminal. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Growing up, he says, his family was "like the Huxtables," and in 2006, he was a successful mortgage professional. But an addiction to crack and — later — methamphetamines turned him into "a down and out

This story originally aired on June 29, 2019. Sitting in an emergency room, trying to catch his breath, Paul Currington had one thought playing over and over in his mind: “Please, God, please don’t let my last thoughts on Earth be of my mother.” They weren’t his last thoughts, especially of his mother. Growing up, Currington’s mother smoked two to three packs a day — always enveloped in clouds of smoke. She had a volcanic temper, he says: “I would do anything to not have to go home so I wouldn’t

This story originally aired on June 29, 2019. It may have not completely hit Cindy Healy, a former NASA engineer, until she was sitting in the theater watching the Matt Damon movie, "The Martian." "And I'm trying hard to suppress an audible sob because I know I am the only one crying at this part of the movie," she said. "And I'm just wiping away tears and my son looks at me like I'm crazy. And I lean over to him and I whisper 'that's my spacecraft.'" Cindy was just one of a few hundred people

It's been about a week since protests began in Western Washington over the death of George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis. The events of the past several days have brought up pain and anger, and a lot of reckoning. Our reporters have heard chants, watched marches and listened to the voices of protesters, police and politicians. Listen back to some of what KNKX has gathered over the last week — the sounds of communities in our area that have had enough.

State Rep. John Lovick spent more than 30 years in uniform with the Washington State Patrol. He was the Snohomish County sheriff and then the county executive. He's also Black, and he grew up in Louisiana in the 1950s and 60s. And he’s been watching and listening to the chants and the voices and the protests we've seen in Washington state and around the country over the last several days. He told KNKX All Things Considered host Ed Ronco that he still believes that America’s soul can be redeemed.

Nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis are hitting home especially hard in Tacoma, after the Pierce County medical examiner ruled the death of Manuel Ellis a homicide . In March, Ellis died in handcuffs while Tacoma police restrained him. The cause of death was respiratory arrest. Jamika Scott is an organizer who has worked with Ellis' family to bring attention to his death.

Thousands marched peacefully from Seattle’s Capitol Hill to City Hall on Wednesday, chanting demands to “defund the police.” The demonstrators gathered at Cal Anderson Park, the site of repeated clashes with police over the past several nights, and made their way through the neighborhood toward downtown Seattle.