Top Headline: Burglaries, Boy With ‘Half a Heart’ Soars, Hard Time

Children’s Home Provides ‘Hope’ For Kids in Need

Paper products.

That’s the answer Stan Pittman, outreach coordinator for Hope Children’s Home, gave when asked how area residents could help the Northwest Hillsborough County facility with donations. With dozens of kids in its care at any given time, Hope is generally a bustling place where youngsters in need can find refuge from situations beyond their control.

Carrollwood Hospital Gets New Surgical Unit

Florida Hospital Carrollwood recently opened a new surgical unit that boasts advanced technologies and personalized patient education.

The new unit includes 25-private rooms on the hospital's fifth floor specially equipped with smart pumps delivering fluids, nutrients and medications at precisely controlled rates, real-time vital signs monitoring, and bedside computers, according to a press release issued by the hospital.

Boy With ‘Half a Heart’ Brings Story to Capitol Hill

Jaden Velasquez, 4, can play soccer, throw a kick in karate class and even charm a Congressman.

Those things are possible today thanks, in part, to the specialty care the Carrollwood youngster received at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, said his mother, Belkis Velasquez.

Jaden was born with “half a heart.”

180 Storage Units Targeted by Thieves

Hillsborough County deputies are on the hunt for two men they say have a penchant for breaking into storage facilities and helping themselves.

The men are wanted in connection with five separate storage facility burglaries in recent weeks. All told, they’ve burglarized more than 180 separate storage units in Northwest Hillsborough County. The string of crimes began on May 29 with the most recent break-in attributed to the pair logged June 15.

Teen Pleads Guilty in Assault, Gets 6 Years in State Prison

When Kobe Jospeh Brantley was arrested Feb. 2 on multiple felony charges, he wasn’t a stranger to the system.

That’s why the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office asked the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office to move the Citrus Park teen out of the juvenile system and into adult courts.