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we hope that some of these stories have inspired you to get involved and do your part because you, too, can be somebody s hero. thank you and good night. [ cheers and applause ] what s it like being billie jean king? i have no idea. i think since i was young, i mean i told my mother at 7, mommy, mommy, i m going to do something great with my life. i know it. i can feel i it. being billie jean king means knknowing from the beginning sh was destined for greatness. i knew the first t time i we off to getet free inststructionh in lonong beach, i i knew at t d of thahat session n i wanted t the numbmber one tenennis playe the worlrld. h how old werere you? i was 1 11. that w was only ththe second t picked up a racket. she quickly fell in love with the sport but also quickly noticed deep inequities in tennis that reflected the same about ththe world. at t 12, i was s playing ata los angegeles tennisis club. all the big tournamements were therere. i i was sitti ....
sandwich. he tore off a corner of it, a piece of bread. he ate it, and he gave the rest to his dog. they ve taught me a lot too. i ll close by saying this. an act of kindness can change your day. change someone s day. an act or gesture of kindness can change somebody s life. thank you. [ applause ] what a night. we want to thank everybody for joining us. thank you, laura. oh, my goodness. thank you for holding my hand. that was beautiful. can you imagine the level of generosity to say give back immediately? this tells you why we do this. thank you so much. you can support all of our honorees right now by going to cnnheroes.com and click donate. each donate will be met dollar for dollar. if you know someone as amazing as tonight s honorees, you can nominate them to be a cnn hero in 2024 because officially, anderson, nominations are now open. we hope that some of these stories have inspired you to get involved and do your part because you, too, can be somebody s h ....
heroes who have dedicated their lives to helping people in need. none of them wear a spandex leotard or cape, at least not while working, not that i m aware of, but they are true heroes. we are live tonight in los angeles and around the world and we have a group of famous folks joining us tonight. they ve generously given their time to share our hero stories with you. some have journeyed to see our honorees. jerry seinfeld, will.i.am. he went to meet one of our heros in wisconsin. my colleague dr. sanjay gupta is streaming live all night with our presenters and honorees. also ice cube, laura dern, christie turlington who went to indonesia. to learn more about one of our heros. if you would like to share these amazing stories with your friends, follow us on facebook, on twitter, use hash tag cnn heroes to bring more attention to these important issues. as i said, we are live tonight. i promise i ll try very hard not to giggle. i laugh like a 13-year-old girl meeting ju ....
tell me just a little bit about gridiron heroes, how it got started. you know, it started after chris suffered a spinal cord injury. it was our last home game. we had to win this game to go to the playoffs. about four or five guys missed the tackle and i made the last touchdo touchdown. along with that, i broke my neck. he just reached his one-year anniversary date of his injury. chris was going through some hard times. he started to shut down on me. depression hit, and i was still in the wheelchair. so just to get him out of the house, i said, let s go to a football game. there was a state championship game. and at that game we ended up witnessing another spinal cord injury. as soon as chris saw that young man being put on that cart, chris turned to me and said, dad, we ve got to go help him. i know what he s going to go through. you know what the family s going to go through. that was the inspiration behind starting grid iron heroes. gridiron heroes, we pr ....