It wasn’t all bad

■■When Naomi Pascal was adopted from an Ethiopian orphanage, her adoptive parents gave her a stuffed bear, Teddy, who traveled with her for four years. Then in October 2020,Teddy disappeared on a trip to Montana’s Glacier National Park. Park ranger Tom Mazzarisi visited the same trail days later to do some end-of-season work, and came across the snow-covered Teddy. A family friend visited the park this September and, amazingly, spotted Teddy on the dashboard of Mazzarisi’s pickup, setting the stage for Naomi to be reunited with her bear.

■■The varsity football team at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside, was once considered an easy win for opponents. Now, after seven straight losing seasons, the Cubs are not just beating their opponents: They’re trouncing them. Last week, they notched an 84-12 win over the Desert Christian Knights in the second round of the playoffs, leaving them two games away from capturing their first division championship. The Cubs confound opponents with a rapid, efficient no-huddle offense, using hand signals between plays to turn what might be thought of as a deficit into an advantage. “They communicate better than any team I have ever coached against,” said Desert Christian coach Aaron Williams.

Perfect communication

■■Manfred Steiner had wanted to become a physicist since he was a teenager in Vienna, where he read about Albert Einstein and

Max Planck. He studied medicine instead and eventually moved to the United States, where he had a successful career studying blood and blood disorders. Decades later, the 89-year-old Rhode Island man achieved his goal. Steiner successfully defended his dissertation at Brown University in Providence and was awarded his Ph.D., despite health problems that could have slowed his studies. “This was the most gratifying point in my life, to finish it,” Steiner said.