A news story out of Islip, New York on Long Island will have every parent crying. Two young siblings, a 5-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, went missing from their home yesterday only to be found drowned in the neighbor's pool. The pool owner has been cited for insufficient fencing, but I am sure that provides little comfort for their mother.

Little Ralph and Sharon Knowles paid the price for their neighbor's lack of adequate fencing. It's hard to imagine two beautiful children gone just like that. As a mom of two children just one year behind Ralph and Sharon, I can imagine my two little explorers wanting to do something like that. Four & six and five & seven happen to be the ages when EVERYONE says, "It has gotten so much easier for you." Some even call it the "golden age." It is, too. They are so sweet and young and innocent still. But they are also more independent. This story is a reminder of just how young they really still are.

They're a phenomenon most people associate with winter, but two avalanches occurred near Seattle, Washington yesterday. The spring avalanches took place on two separate mountains, and initially three people were reported missing.

One avalanche happened at Granite Mountain, and the other was on Red Mountain, which is near the Alpental ski area off I-90.

Both came down while heavy snow was falling in the Cascade Mountains, due to a weather system that moved in from the Gulf of Alaska.

For some reason, escalators have always made me nervous. They're like revolving stairways of sharp metal teeth just waiting to snag unsuspecting mall shoppers and subway riders. Sounds crazy, I know, but it turns out escalators really can kill: A 42-year-old man died on Sunday morning when his shirt got caught on an escalator in a Seattle bus terminal and strangled him. Tragically, by the time police and medics arrived, Maurecio Bell couldn't be saved.

How does something like this happen?! According to Department of Transportation spokesman Jeff Switzer, “[Bell] appears to have lost his balance toward the bottom, and at the point where people are stepping off the escalator, he was laying flat. His clothing became entangled in the escalator."

In a scene that's reminiscent of something out of a movie, a plane crashed into the ocean in Bali, Indonesia after overshooting the runway upon landing.

The Lion Air jet was carrying over 100 passengers and crew, and you can only imagine their state of terror as the plane made its approach into Denpasar airport and proceeded to fall into the water from a height of 50 meters.

On Friday, Carolyn Ann Watkins, 62, of North Carolina crashed her car into a deep ditch. The airbags deployed. A trooper sent to the scene could not find the driver and ordered her car towed. On Monday, when Watkins did not show up for work, her son reported her missing. Upon investigation, her body was found IN the driver's seat of the car that had been towed. She had been killed three days before and no one noticed.

This story is awful for so many, many reason it is hard to even begin to list them. Obviously, first and foremost, this is a tragedy for her family. But, it is also a tragedy for humanity. It is not entirely unlike that horrific story two years ago at a public pool in Boston where a woman's body sat at the bottom of a pool for days while people swam and was ignored.

Are people just not looking out for one another any more?

Sometimes it pays to think outside the box. Sometimes it can even save lives. Take Raedyn Grasseth, a 911 dispatcher in Washington State. When she got a call from a 45-year-old woman who was stranded in the Ohio river after her kayak sank in a swift current, hanging on to "log pilings" for dear life (how she managed to make a call on her cell phone I don't know, but never mind), Grasseth's first response was to notify the Sheriff's office. Because that's job protocol, of course.

But as soon as Grasseth got off the phone with the Sheriff, she realized something: Her own mother, Cindy Faubion, along with a few other members of her family, lived much closer to where the boater was stranded and could kayak out to save her long before the Sheriff's patrol boat would arrive. (Does everybody in that town own a kayak, btw?)

He was being a normal teenager. Sneaking out of the house, disobeying his parents, dabbling in rebellion. Caleb Gordley wanted to go to a party last Saturday, but his plans got snuffed out when his mom and dad grounded him for not cleaning his room. But, in authentic teenage hardheadedness, he went anyway. There, the 16-year-old started drinking—to the point of being drunk—and when his friends dropped him off after their night of festivities, he stumbled to a window to sneak back up to his bedroom. Except his friends dropped him off at the wrong house, and he was too wasted to notice, particularly since this home, like many in housing communities that have popped up around the country, looked almost exactly like the one he lived in two doors down. 

The story of the 17-year-old race car driver whose car crashed into the pit area on Saturday night that killed two people gets sadder and sadder as more details emerge. One of the two people that sprint car driver Chase Johnson's car struck was his 14-year-old cousin. And not just his cousin but his "best friend," Marcus Johnson. According to family members the two boys were like "two peas in a pod." Marcus was an aspiring race car driver, too. You can only imagine the bond that these two boys who grew up together all their lives must have shared. The grief that Chase Johnson must be experiencing right now must be unbearable for this poor kid.