The Good News: Meet a lawn-mowing officer and a Nashville NFL star giving back to local kids

Hello, friends. I wanted to share some of the month's highlights from my weekly email subscriber-only newsletter called The Good News with Brad Schmitt.

The newsletter is a wonderful collection of feel-good stories I find from the Nashville area. Below, you'll find a super-nice Metro Police officer, a Nashville woman who reunited with her long-lost birth mom from Greece, and a Nashville native NFL star who came back to hang with kids at his old high school.

You can even check out a fun video above about a Dickson woman who babysits her neighbor's pet pig!

It's fun, and it's a nice break from the heavy stories we often see in our social media and online news feeds. Check out these highlights.

Metro Officer cuts elderly woman's grass in 93-degree heat

He got a call July 4 about a house alarm going off in the Green Hills area. When Metro Police Officer Sekou Samassi arrived, he discovered a 75-year-old widow sitting outside in a soaked shirt.

The woman, Mary Catherine, was taking a break from cutting her grass. They both checked the house alarm, and there were no intruders or anything else wrong inside.

Samassi started to leave but stopped when he saw the lawnmower sitting on the grass.

"Hey, sorry to bother you," he told Mary Catherine, "but I'd really like to cut the rest of your yard for you, if you don't mind. It'd make me happy."

She resisted for a few moments, but then agreed to accept his offer.

Mary Catherine was so moved that she took a picture of him cutting the grass and sent a thank-you email to the police chief.

"I am writing to let you know about my encounter with a Metro police officer yesterday. It was delightful," she wrote.

"His visit and concern on an otherwise lonely and bleak holiday was the highlight of my week. ... What a pleasant encounter with a Metro police officer this was. I thought you should know. He is a terrific ambassador for the police department."

Samassi, 31, a five-year veteran on the police department, said he was moved by the email.

"It kind of made me blush, actually," he said, laughing. "But I loved doing it. The pleasure was all mine." Hear directly from Samassi in this video The Tennessean posted.

Her big fat Greek adoption

Since she was a little girl, Linda Carol Trotter knew she'd been adopted from Greece. But Linda loved her adoptive parents so much, she didn't think a lot about her bio parents, and she never sought them out — until her adoptive parents died several years back.

Then, in her late 50s, Linda said, she suddenly felt like an orphaned little girl. Even though she was married with an adult daughter, Linda said, "I felt like I was all alone."

That started a wild, emotional search through papers, Facebook and Greek professors, all documented in a giant binder Linda labeled "My Big Fat Greek Adoption."

Linda found her family in Greece — and discovered her biological mom was still alive and very much wanting to meet her long-lost daughter. They hugged and wept when the two reunited in June 2017 in a Greek airport.

Since then, Linda has been back to her home country dozens of times, and she and her husband, who live in Franklin, bought a house in Greece.

And Linda discovered there are thousands of Greek babies born in the 1950s and '60s who, like her, were flown to the United States for adoption under questionable circumstances.

She decided she would try to reunite other Greece-born Americans with their biological families. Linda formed a nonprofit called The Eftychia Project — Eftychia is the name her bio mom gave her at birth — to help adoptees find their Greek families.

"I found that joy and that peace from getting closure, getting that piece of my identity that was missing," Linda told me. "I wanted everybody to feel that peace."

Linda and members of her small nonprofit board have helped 15 people reunite with their Greek families. Linda herself was there for two of those reunions, crying right along with long-lost children and parents.

On the weekend of Aug. 4, The Eftychia Project is hosting a weekend in Franklin for any and all U.S. adoptees from Greece and their biological families. Linda thinks at least 50 adoptees will be there in the first gathering of this kind in the world.

Events will include Greek dancing, Greek meals and a visit to the Parthenon. All to celebrate the feeling Linda had that first time she landed in Athens.

"Stepping on Greek soil and feeling an instant affinity for Greece and Greek people? Amazing," she said. "I wanted everyone else to feel that way, too."

5 worth the drive: The best restaurants about an hour away from Nashville

Read this: Why this adoptive dad decided to go to law school

Seattle Seahawks safety flies back to Nashville

NFL safety Ugo Amadi went back to his alma mater, Nashville's John Overton High School, July 17 to run a mini-camp for kids.

Ain't that great?

"My sons participated!" Franklin marketing consultant Juliana Stachurski, 44, wrote me. "I watched them and over 100 local kids from all backgrounds work hard and play hard in the hot midday sun.

"They left camp star-struck that 'real NFL players' were coaching them through drills, and they piled in the car exhausted and full of joy from the fun, high fives, autographs and pictures with THE Ugo and his coaching staff of NFL and college football players."

Sweet! Well, except for that hot midday sun part. Yuck.

Be part of the Good News fun

Tennessean subscribers, you can sign up for our weekly Good News with Brad Schmitt newsletter online at tennessean.com.

And please, send me all your good news! Someone in your neighborhood do something great? Email me at brad@tennessean.com. Your kid's scout troop sell a billion cookies? I'll pack in so many of your feel-good stories that you'll smile your face off!

Thanks for joining the fun. :)

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Good News with Brad Schmitt: July's highlights from this newsletter