Cathy Free

Salt Lake City

Stories about humanity for Inspired Life.
Cathy Free is a former contributing editor for Reader's Digest and worked as a human interest correspondent for People Magazine before joining The Post. She started her journalism career in high school as a copy clerk at The Salt Lake Tribune, where she became a feature writer and columnist. She has also worked as a daily local columnist for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. There is nothing she enjoys more than traveling on a road she's never been on to talk to somebody she's never met.
Latest from Cathy Free

For his wife’s 40th birthday, he paid for 40 shelter dog adoptions

“It’s honestly the most sentimental and perfect gift I’ve ever gotten,” said Jennifer Duhe of Chesapeake, Virginia.

November 29, 2024
Jennifer and Andrew Duhe at Chesapeake Animal Services in Chesapeake, Virginia this year. They've volunteered at the shelter for about a year and a half.

Pet pig visits senior home each day: ‘They’re very social animals’

“He loves to snuggle on the couch and be scratched,” said Brett Martin, who brings his pig to work every day at Good Samaritan Society in Kansas.

November 23, 2024
Odin gets daily snacks from residents at the Good Samaritan Society senior care center in Olathe, Kansas.

Man walked rainy highway for hours to help stranger find lost funeral notes

“I couldn’t believe it — why would he do that?” Jeannie Wolf said. “It was like a miracle to me.”

November 20, 2024
Arnie Dienoff with Jeannie Wolf in St. Charles, Missouri. Dienoff tracked down funeral plans for Wolf’s mother that had blown away in the wind.

Dog left for dead on road; couple empty wedding fund to save her

“She’s very young and deserved a lot better than what she’d been through,” Dylan McCay said.

November 14, 2024
Goldendoodle Acklin, temporarily named for the road where she was found, recovers from her injuries.

Birth of an endangered ape: ‘This new baby has brought a lot of hope’

A newborn siamang at ZooTampa has brought hope for survival of the endangered ape species.

November 12, 2024
Hutan, a 17-year-old siamang gibbon, holds the newest member of her family, born Oct. 27 at ZooTampa. The baby’s sex is not yet known.

They were preemies in the NICU at the same time. Now they’re married.

They reconnected years later when their mothers set them up.

November 8, 2024
Newlyweds Rachel and Hayden Sackey dressed up as a bride and groom during a Halloween visit at the Michigan newborn intensive care unit where they spent their first three months of life. They're holding photos taken when they were teenagers and posed with their baby pictures for a hospital fundraiser.

For Halloween, a beauty pageant: The contestants are bats

Thousands of people have cast their votes to decide which small toothy winged creature is the best looking among the contestants.

October 31, 2024
Hoary Potter, a hoary bat from Oregon, made it to the final round of this year's Bat Beauty Contest hosted by the Bureau of Land Management.

Blind birders in tune with bird sounds, call themselves ‘bird brains’

“The world is designed for sighted people, but nature is a place where it’s okay to be blind,” said Donna Posont, founder of Birding by Ear and Beyond.

October 27, 2024
From left, Jenny Wing-Proctor, Donna Posont, Fred Wurtzel and Michael Solomon at a birding group outing this month in Dearborn, Michigan.

He walked 38 dogs at once: ‘My arms felt like they were on fire’

“I kept talking and reassuring them they were good dogs, and they could do it,” said Mitchell Rudy, who broke a Guinness World Record.

October 26, 2024
Mitchell Rudy during his Guinness World Record dog-walking feat last month in South Korea.

A Civil War soldier didn’t have a tombstone. Two teens just got him one.

“It was sad to think of all he’d been through in his life, and he didn’t even have a headstone,” said Kendall Peruzzini, 13.

October 25, 2024
Kendall Peruzzini, left, and Mary McCormick study ledgers this past summer at the historian’s office in Orleans County, New York.