Announcer: Lifec-hanging Decisions, that's coming up.

After you travel the world and after you graduate college, it's your duty almost to pick somebody else up by the bootstraps.

You have to do it.

So, you just answer the call and then, you know.

And then the road is so narrow, you can't turn around, so it's what you have to do.

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Have you ever hit a moment in your life where you know you're at a crossroad and a big decision needs to be made?

Well, today we meet guests who were there and who made it to the other side and their life is forever changed.

[theme music] [applause] Our first guest made the decision to dive into his past and because of that, everything about his future changed.

Kirk Kellerhals was adopted from Vietnam by an American veteran.

He went his whole life missing his identity.

One decision however, changed his world for the better.

I was born in the summer of 1969 in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

My father was serving, he was a US Major in the Army and he was serving in a war there.

And while he was over there, my adopted mother and him decided that they wanted to adopt a child.

I grew up in the United States with an adopted family.

I just remember my school mates in elementary school making fun of me because I looked different from my parents.

I was called just about everything under the sun you can think of when it comes to racial slurs.

It kind of dawned on me at that point that I was, you know, born in Vietnam during the War and that being Vietnamese was not looked well upon.

So, it was one of those things where I denied my heritage.

I denied who I was.

It wasn't until my adult life when I had children and I didn't want them going through their life living the same lie I had, denying their heritage and not knowing where they came from, not knowing who they were.

So, at that point I started trying to dig and trying to find more information and one thing led to another.

It was just like a snowball effect at that point.

Whitney: Kirk made the decision to order a DNA test, and what came next, he never expected.

I submitted the DNA test and exactly 29 days later there was this email, and the subject line says, "Looking for my son."

About two minutes later I got another email and this time it was from the DNA company and it said, "Parent/child match found."

And it was just like a ton of bricks hit me.

My daughter and my wife and I talked back and forth and she found out that this woman, the name is actually pronounced Ni Niblet had been searching for her son for the last 48 years that she had lost in Vietnam.

And the story is that right after I was born, she held me long enough to realize that I was a boy.

But right after that her brother who would've been my uncle, on the orders of my grandfather took me from my mother and took me to the orphanage.

I'm pretty sure my grandfather realized that if the Viet Cong end up winning this war and this child is found, not only this child but his daughter and even his family stood a chance of either being in prison or executed.

She spent the next 48 years of life trying to figure out what happened to me.

So, I found out that she was alive and well and living in Center Point, Texas, less than an hour from where my adoptive parents were living.

They had been living down there in the same area together for the last 25 years.

So, I found that out and also, I found out at the same time that not only was my mother alive and well, I found out that my biological father was alive and well and living up in Syracuse, New York.

And I was able to reconnect with both of them and the bonds were just instant, just like we had known each other our whole life.

There was this part of me that felt guilty.

I felt like I had gotten a blessing that I didn't deserve.

For a couple years, it was the craziest thing.

It was just, I knew there was something I had to do.

I knew there was something that I needed to do with this blessing because it was too big for me to just keep to myself.

Reconnecting with my family and coming to the realization that there are a lot of people out there that aren't where I am.

They still need healing.

They still have trauma that is really deep inside of them.

And it was based on my connections and my realization of the healing and the blessings I got that myself and four other adoptees from Sacred Heart Orphanage started a new Foundation, a non-profit organization to try to help these adoptees and their families reconnect through DNA testing.

We started this Foundation so we could try to garner support to go back to Vietnam with these DNA test kits and connect Amerasians with the birth mothers and get the testing, the database, so these, you know, adoptees can reconnect with their past, reconnect with their families.

And I've realized that there's things that I can do with this other group of adoptees that have started this foundation, for the veterans.

And not just the Vietnam War; it's for any war.

So, we are providing programs and ways for them to be able to deal with their emotional scars, their emotional healing.

Whitney: How could something like this happen just by chance?

Kirk believes the right series of steps will always lead you where you need to go.

There's no such thing as coincidence.

Everything happens for a specific reason.

You know we're presented different opportunities, whether we exercise our free will to do the right or wrong thing with that opportunity, you know, it depends on us.

And what I found is that if you choose to do the right thing, the other opportunities just tend to snowball one into the other.

Our next guest was also impacted by adoption.

However, his was an adopted mentality, one that is changing a whole city.

Let's take a look at "My Block My Hood and My City."

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

We've been talking about life-changing decisions and you literally adopted a mentality that's changing Chicago.

Tell us about it.

I just started listening.

I listened to people at Cook County Jail, listened to people on blocks, listened to people in schools and figuring out how I can help.

And in the jail, it just shocked me that nobody had ever been downtown.

You know, nobody ever waved for a taxi.

Nobody ever been in an elevator.

Nobody had ever, you know, left their neighborhood, and that was tragic to me, and I wanted to do something about it.

I did something really simple about it.

I just took them on field trips.

Took them on field trips.

Well, let's go back.

Why were you in the jail talking?

God used my life to, you know, to help people.

And I was like, I'm going to go to the jail.

When I get to the jail, I'm going to talk to the young people about what it was like to go to college, what it was like to travel overseas, what it was like to grow up just like them, and in a few smart decisions, you can chart a different path for yourself, so that's why I went.

It's so interesting because you know all of us have these little nudges in our life that we know maybe what we should do, or we hear it, but you actually activated that.

Yeah, I didn't want to do it.

I wanted to be a rapper.

I didn't want to be a community activist, or I didn't want to be a mentor.

It's just something that God chooses you to do it and what are you going to say, like, oh-- After you travel the world and after you graduate college, it's your duty almost to pick somebody else up by the bootstraps, you have to do it.

So, you just answer the call and then, you know, the road is so narrow, you can't turn around.

So, this is what you have to do.

So, you're sitting in the jail.

Yeah.

And you're talking to these men.

Yes.

What did they say that then connected the dots to start such a big thing?

Everything that I said, it was all the excuses I made.

I'm a product of my environment.

I'm a victim of my circumstances.

My parents didn't go to college, people of race-- That's my list of excuses.

I said the same thing.

Guess what, disappointments ain't reserved for you.

Disappointments ain't reserved for you in Chatham.

Disappointments ain't reserved for you on the West Side of Chicago.

It rains on people in the suburbs too.

No excuses.

And so, that's the mentality.

And so, they couldn't tell me anything I hadn't said before, and I can look them in the eye and talk about what it was like to break into houses.

I can talk about what it's like to not go to school.

I can talk about what it's like to have parents doing drugs.

No excuses.

Read a book, do something with your life.

Make some goals.

So, it's that kind of real conversation.

When did you say, "Okay, they're saying, 'My block, my hood,' but do they know this city?"

Yeah, it was just because they didn't want to hear me speak, you know.

"Where you from?"

Oh, my block is this.

Or my hood is the low end.

And I say, "Oh, well, you say 'My block and my hood' "like you own it.

"Like, you don't own anything.

Like, why don't you ever say my city?"

"Oh, ain't no Black people downtown.

Ain't no Black people in Wicker Park."

And at this time, I was selling books downtown in front of Footlocker, so I seen a lot of Black people and I'm Black.

And so, you know, I told them that, "Have you ever been downtown?"

"No."

"Has anybody been downtown?"

Nobody said anything.

And that's when it dawned on me that you know, everybody in jail their whole worldview has been shaped by the infrastructure of their neighborhood, and that's tragic, and I want to do something about it.

So, what did you do about it?

Let's talk the basics of how this started, because now it's a big movement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anybody that wants to start anything, I don't think you have to be innovative.

Like, I wasn't thinking it was going to be innovative.

I was just trying to help, you know what I mean?

So, it's like, "Oh, you never been downtown?

Let me get a bus to take kids downtown."

Oh, you know let me go to the barber shop and ask if you want to go Greektown or go to the Sears Tower.

And I just started asking my friends to let me use their car or can you help me drive?

And next thing you know the whole barber shop wanted to go.

And then I just started calling the businesses prior to.

That's one of the things that sometimes when we're making these big decisions, we feel like it has to be something that you just like turn the light switch on and it's all there.

But what you're saying is, it wasn't like that.

It was taking those first little steps.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It was getting your home foreclosed.

It was spending money from your job.

It was like, you know, wanting to quit every day.

It was like not knowing what you're doing.

It was like not getting any grants.

It was like people saying that you don't know what you're doing, you know.

And you just, if you do what you love you seem to organically build relationships that help you be successful, so I just stayed at it.

I didn't go into it with-- I'm not a U-Chicago graduate.

I'm not a lawyer.

I'm none of that.

But all those people started helping me prove that traveling was transformative by me just not giving up and putting it all on.

That is absolutely phenomenal because I want our viewers to understand that today is that, the road wasn't easy.

No.

It wasn't some big decision that overnight just came.

No.

But now you're here.

Tell us about what is going on with the organization now?

You know, we want to be around for a hundred years.

I mean, we're like the Red Cross of community.

So, we not only take teenagers on field trips, we help our block clubs with shoveling.

We help out seniors during COVID.

We helped out small businesses.

We just gave out a million dollars last year to small businesses that needed help with-- I just want you to say that again.

You just gave, I mean, a million dollars.

Yeah.

We gave out a million dollars.

To small businesses.

This is what it takes.

I mean, that is amazing that here you were saying, you know, I had all this other stuff happen and now I'm able to give back in such big ways.

Yeah, I mean, it's energy to me.

You know, it's just like I'm blessed.

I got a great team.

You know, I'm a leader, but as a leader, you have to hire smart people.

But I found people that are great at HR.

I found people that are great at youth development.

Found people that are great at community development.

Some people are good at spreadsheets and budgeting.

I don't want nothing to do with that.

I want to try to inspire helping people and arouse enthusiasm in people.

And so, I stay in my lane and I'm super blessed to just encourage my team and be with them, so.

For the mom watching today that might have a troubled teen at home, what would you say to break them out of a bad pattern?

Just exposure.

I think that you'd be surprised, you know, you take a kid from the West Side of Chicago and you take him to Traverse City, Michigan and then two days later they say, "Wow, I haven't even heard a siren in a few days."

And then I think just getting mentors is-- Mentors.

Yeah, mentorship, because there's an underlying reason why that child is behaving that way.

Right.

And if you're consistent with the child, they're going to tell you probably that they're probably so used to people coming in and out of their lives, it might take a couple months.

But I guess that's what I would say, don't be judgmental.

Try to listen to understand, and also that's your child, so you should probably know what they're interested in, you know what I mean.

Yeah.

And the decision to start this organization, do you ever look back and say, "I would've done it any other way?"

No, like, no.

I mean, I'm glad it was hard.

I'm glad it is hard.

I feel like I'm glad I failed a lot of times.

I mean, I'm not probably going to fail a lot more times.

Again, I wasn't trying to build an organization.

I was taking teenagers from jail, downtown, and people told me I was building an organization.

I was like, "Oh, that's what you think I'm doing.

I'm just moving in my purpose."

I'm not trying to like, you know-- and all the other stuff came with it.

But this is like my purpose.

and you know when you walk in your purpose because stuff starts to happen.

It's like, oh, I just met a great person today.

Or wow, somebody just gave me 100 dollars.

Or somebody beeped their horn and said, "Jamal, I love what you're doing."

You know when you walk in your purpose, you can just feel it.

I love that.

Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

And speaking of major city impact, let's see how one mayor's decision could have a nationwide ripple effect.

Mayor Teresa Barrett, with one decision, was able to upkeep her town's health and safety while also continuing to the fight against climate change and fossil fuels.

All the gas stations that we have in town, and there are 16 now and the one approved, they will not be able to expand the sale of fossil fuel.

They won't be able to put in more pumps or enlarge their underground storage tanks, but they can add EV charging facilities.

And with the conditional use permit, they can add hydrogen charging facilities.

It came out of a controversial gas station approval process.

And it was a gas station that was going to be going in across the street from a preschool.

There were a lot of neighbors who had concerns about that, but our zoning allowed it and so it ended up being approved.

So, we started to look at our zoning laws to see whether or not we could change the future placement of gas stations.

Staff looked at our gas stations and presented us with the idea that we had enough gas stations.

So, we moved from a moratorium to banning any future gas stations.

Whitney: The mayor's decision was one of the first in the area that promoted the protection of climate and public health.

I think we were thinking mostly about safety and about air quality and about protecting the people who live here.

But yes, of course, you know it is also part of our climate emergency that we have acknowledged.

We feel that this is a way to help these gas stations not drive them out of business, but help them transition to the next stage.

[music] And now we take a look a life-changing career decisions.

Meet Steve Dell, known as the pet guy.

He has been on the pet beat for quite some time.

However, this wasn't always his calling.

It was a decision he had to make involving multiple factors.

Yeah, it's a story I don't often talk about.

It happened a while ago, but it's like [sigh], it did change my life.

So, I was writing about entertainment.

I would also write about pets whenever I could.

And the editors at that time tolerated that.

And thank you editors for tolerating that.

It was the pullout section mostly, called the Friday Section.

And I became known as the pet guy.

I began writing for pet publications also just because I loved it so much.

But I also began to write and I was writing about celebrities coming to town.

I was the guy covering Chicago for a variety of different legitimate publications.

But one of those publications, and I'm fast forwarding the clock a couple of years now, began to say, because this is the way the industry was going, essentially, hide in the bushes, you know, and jump out and catch them dating someone they shouldn't be dating or whatever.

So, I thought, I don't really want to do that.

And they wanted me to do a nasty story about one particular well-known Chicago person.

And I began to work on it actually because it was, you know, part of my job.

But I'll tell you, very early on I said to my editor, "I can't do this."

At the same time, I get a call saying, "We love your pet stuff so much we want you to be our syndicated pet columnist."

And I didn't just say yes, I actually had to think about it for a moment.

And then about 3 hours later, there I am in an elevator and the elevator goes [clinking] and it didn't just slowly stop, it like, stopped.

[chuckling] Like, it hit the brakes, you know.

Other passengers in the elevator began to panic.

One of the passengers began to pace back and forth.

The other passenger, another began to cry and another began to bark.

I was with three dogs.

The elevator company is way, way, way out in the suburbs and it's about 5:30 in the afternoon, it's rush hour.

So, it's going to be a while before I can be rescued.

So, I just sat down, and I thought about that offer, and I thought of two pieces of advice that two people gave me.

She took me aside, she began to cry and she said, "I was just attacked by some tabloid.

"This is what they wrote about me.

"I don't know if I still need to do this.

I don't know that it's worth it."

And she said, "You know what?

You think I make a difference in peoples lives?"

I said, "Oh my gosh, yes."

She said, "I hope so "because that's the only reason why I do what I do.

"And if you can make a difference in peoples lives, then it's worth doing whatever you do."

Whitney: That led Steve to a revelation in an elevator; one that involved his dog.

So, when we rescued Chaser, she was about a year old, a Brittany and she was afraid of everything, but we worked through it.

And for separation anxiety today, I could talk to you, and I'm happy to some time for 3 hours about the many solutions and opportunities that we have to help these dogs.

Back then not as much was known.

And I learned.

Whitney: In the elevator, something miraculous happened.

His dog Chaser was able to calm down the other dogs.

Instantly, I felt the calm with this dog, and the other two dogs did too.

And they began to relax.

And I thought if I can have a relationship with this dog that I have, I can help families too.

I had a bit of experience in being able to help people with their pets, and I thought, would it be so bad if I do this all the time?

I thought in the elevator, if I could make a difference in peoples lives, I will.

And I took the gig and since then I've never looked back.

I've been very fortunate.

Whitney: After his decision, Steve's life changed for the better.

He is now walking with purpose.

I became certified as an animal behavior consultant, which I would never have looked into a crystal ball and predicted traveling around the world, even talking at veterinary conferences over and over and over again.

I've been very, very, very fortunate.

Just making the difference one person at a time, or one animal at a time to me is important.

The decision to keep going.

George Lopez joins us now with more.

Whitney: "Walking With Herb" is a film about a man in the midst of turmoil who receives a message that he will win a golf championship if he has enough faith.

He was sent a messenger, Herb, played by George Lopez to help him along the way.

Tell us about your character and what that meant to you playing such an important role?

Playing Herb in this film that was adaptation of a book about a guy who suffered some loss at birth when he lost his mother.

And then it was adapted to a screenplay by somebody who was sick at that time and passed right after the filming.

But to see both of those guys in the same place and to know that everything about what happened to them should have made them cynical and bitter and removed, and they weren't.

And it was a testament to having hope and having faith.

You don't make a life-changing decision and imagine that the next day it's going to come to fruition.

You might not know that it's going to happen or not happen.

But if you don't try, you know that at least it's not going to happen.

You know I'm about to turn 60 and on my birthday in 1984, I decided-- I was living with my friend in a duplex in Pacoimo, California and that morning when I got up, I decided that I was going to go back and do stand up and that I wasn't going to quit no matter what happened.

And if anything happened that's good, really the best thing that happened is that I taught myself not to be a quitter.

So, going back to the hope that people have the choice to find, and this is kind of the resonating theme of the movie, what advice would you give to our viewers to access that hope, or to discover it?

Well, if you're optimistic, you realize you're optimistic.

And if someone has to say to you, "Hey man, smile," or "Cheer up," or you know "Things are going to get better," you know that you're not an optimistic person, and that somebody can see that on the outside.

Sure, it's great to be able to tell somebody to have fun, but you have to remember that if you're telling somebody to stay with it and have fun, you have to believe that message as well.

So, you know, there's a lot of motivational speakers, there's a lot of motivational material and there's a lot of time and money spent on motivation, but it does no good if you don't think of yourself as a key that could turn on that engine.

In this life, we will be faced with big and small decisions, but the outcome truly depends on you.

Remember your story matters.

[music] Announcer: The Whitney Reynolds Show is made possible by O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Sciton because results matter.

Theraderm Clinical Skin Care: committed to developing skincare products designed to restore skin health and promote natural beauty.

Happy to Meat You: Prime.

Fresh.

Fast.

Leigh Marcus: Stop looking, start finding.

Children's Learning Place.

Ballroom Baths & Home Design.

Pedalheads.

UFC Gym Wrigleyville.

My Buddy's Chicago.

Brendon Studzinkski with State Farm.

Goldfish Swim School.

Ella's Bubbles.

The Kid's Table.

Hi-Five Sports Chicago.

The Metropolitan Chicago.

Fresh Dental.

Kevin Kelly with Jameson Sotheby's International Realty.

Mitchell Black.

Jewelry & Coin Mart of Schaumburg.

CI Med Spa.

Love Your Melon.

Deluxe Cleaning Services.

STI Moving & Storage.

Tutu School Chicago.

And by other sponsors.

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