Growing up in the 1970s, I took for granted the trash piles along the highway, tires washed up on beaches, and smog fouling city air. The famed “Crying Indian” commercial of 1971 became a symbol of widespread environmental damage across the United States.

BRANDY STATION, Va. (AP) — On a sparkling late-fall Sunday at a rural Virginia airfield, 16 careworn passengers were getting off a flight that changed, even saved, their lives.

Tessa Domingus found purpose on the back deck of a Lincoln rehabilitation home, conversing with a man who didn’t want to spend his next paycheck on alcohol.

Sunlight shone through the leaves of a large tree in the backyard as they talked. It was the sort of day where, just a few years earlier, Domingus would have been out searching for a house party, a chance to use.