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SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY kindness counts DREW STEVENS STARTED HIS "BE KIND" CAMPAIGN AS THE LEGACY OF HIS 12-YEAR-OLD SON JOSH WHO DIED FAR TOO YOUNG. TODAY, THE ORGANIZATION TOUCHES THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS. BY JOANNA HAUGEN 40 I'm right in the middle of rescuing a nerd.' That was his thing. We'd go to the mall, and he'd run ahead and hold the door open for me; my wife, Barbara; his sister; his brother, Sam; and anyone else who was standing there. He'd stand there, sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes, just holding the door. He would also run out to my car and open everyone's car doors. He'd open the door for his mom and then his brother and sister, and then he'd run around and do it for me. After Josh died, Barbara said to me, 'Wouldn't you feel empty-handed if we went somewhere and saw a kid open a door for a bunch of strangers? We're just going to walk right by and cry.' We decided to turn that around and make something good of it, and that's how the Kindness Card came to be. It's a card that speaks about the significance of a single act of kindness, regardless of how small it is. It is wrapped with a silicone bracelet that has a Be Kind message on it, and the only way a child can get one is to be caught doing something genuinely kind, not because they were asked to or told to or continued on page 42 PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN REASON T welve-year-old Josh Stevens was known for his smile and kindness. On Friday, September 5, 2008, his life was tragically cut short in a golf cart accident near his Anthem home. Josh had been home-schooled the previous three years but had an enormous amount of friends at his new school, on local sports teams, and at the family's church. The boy's popularity was owed to his thoughtfulness and compassion, a legacy that his family, led by father The Josh Stevens Drew, manifested into the Josh Stevens Foundation, Foundation has an organization that recognizes genuine acts of kindtouched nearly 200 schools in ness. In a culture marred by school bullying and Clark County in the worse, the foundation's Be Kind message is spreading past three years. like wildfire. After making a huge difference in local schools, often transforming troublemaking kids, the program is now taking off to seven other states, whose teachers, school administrators, counselors, students, and parents hope that the powerful program will have as much of an impact on their students as it has had on ours. Here, Drew Stevens shares his story: "From the very minute I was holding Josh and knew he was no longer alive, I knew that our family was going to do something to honor him. In our culture, we don't talk about death. We just brush it under the rug. We don't talk about people when they're gone, and that was unimaginable to me. How could we not talk about Josh? He was amazing. My family has struggled since his death, but we decided to do something good in this world in Josh's name, and it wasn't difficult to determine what that would look like. We knew that Josh's gift was his kind heart. He was blessed with so many friends. It was easy to like him. He was a nice kid who wasn't mean or cruel, and if he saw someone getting picked on, he went to their defense. My daughter, Shelbie, told me that a week before we lost him, she called him on his cell phone, and he said, 'Shelbie, I can't talk right now. VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 040-042_V_SP_SpiritofGen_Win13.indd 40 1/2/13 2:10 PM