Alaska

Volunteer team provides Alaska veteran with revamped home after major renovations

Published

2 years ago

November 21, 2024

Volunteer team provides Alaska veteran with revamped home after major renovations

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – David Honeycutt expected one of his appliances to be repaired — not a complete home renovation.

Members of the Home Depot Foundation’s Operation Surprise campaign have spent days working to improve Honeycutt’s home.

Honeycutt said he sustained a spinal injury during his Army service, resulting in a permanent disability that prevented him from navigating his home safely for years. A friend and fellow veteran reached out and nominated Honeycutt for some outside help.

“I was in getting in a bad place and they realized that,” Honeycutt said. “And they’d given me hope.”

Visiting with the team before they began working in his home, it became clear Honeycutt’s house was inaccessible and inconvenient for its owner.

Eric Rangel, district captain for Team Depot — Home Depot’s volunteer force — said when they first met, they were mostly concerned about difficult-to-use appliances.

“Well, that very quickly grew, and we wanted to give him something a little bit more,” Rangel said.

Initial plans to deal with appliances then turned into a multiple-day project; team members built a 12-by-12 woodshed outside Honeycutt’s back door to give him access to firewood, repaired his deck to keep him safe getting in and out of his vehicle, added doggy doors for Honeycutt’s companion Misty, grab irons throughout the house, and installed new stairs for Honeycutt to exit his sunken living room without hurting himself.

Before the changes, Honeycutt said his life was heading in a dark direction. Even traversing the stairs in his home became impossible, preventing him from sleeping in his own bedroom for two years.

Honeycutt said he ruined his own couch by sleeping on it rather than trying to get to bed.

“It became my pit, kind of hard to get in and out,” he said. “Kind of, ‘Do I bother hurting myself getting out again?’ … The house got worse. I got worse.”

Following the repairs, Rangel believes they’ve turned some things around.

“He can navigate his home, and be the independent veteran that he’s been his whole life.”

The improvements to Honeycutt’s home were made by employees at the Home Depot in Kenai, who said they’re motivated by knowing they’re helping those who served the country.

“Just, like, ‘Wow, I helped this gentleman,’ I feel so happy,” one volunteer said as the large group huddled in the soon-to-be complete kitchen they were working on. “It makes me want to just keep driving forward and help out the community.”

The team installed an entirely new kitchen and accessible cabinets, which Rangel said will give Honeycutt the ability to cook for himself once again — a passion Honeycutt is looking to share once everything is complete.

“I won $1,000 for my chili in a chili cookoff in Oklahoma,” he said. “So I am gonna make them — the Home Depot Store — five gallons of my special chili.”

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Alaska

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

Published

5 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.

Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.

Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.

Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.

Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.

The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.

I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.

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Alaska

Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video

Published

15 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video

Can bearly believe it!

A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.

The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.

Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.

The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.

Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.

“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.

“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”

After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.

The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.

But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.

“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.

“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”

Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.

JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.

While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.

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Alaska

Fatal crash closes Glenn Highway southbound lanes near Eagle River

Published

1 day ago

July 9, 2026

Press Room

Fatal crash closes Glenn Highway southbound lanes near Eagle River

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The southbound lanes of the Glenn Highway were closed Thursday morning near the S-curves due to a fatal crash, according to the Anchorage Police Department.

Police confirmed shortly after 11 a.m. that at least one person was dead. As of 12:45 p.m., one southbound lane is now open to traffic.

The southbound lanes of the Glenn Highway were closed July 9, 2026 near the S-curves due to a fatal crash, according to the Anchorage Police Department.(Alaska’s News Source)

An Alaska’s News Source reporter on the scene said the crash took place near the Eagle River Loop Road. Video from the scene shows multiple vehicles took damage in the incident.

This is a developing story. It has been updated with new information.

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