A Sobering Message
When Tyrone, 41, can't make his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he relies on something else to help him stay sober: text messages. The daily recovery-themed messages from a company called I Live Inspired remind him to "look to my higher power for guidance, and accept life," he says, quoting a recent dispatch. I Live Inspired is the brainchild of Rob Foster, a 28-year-old former cocaine addict from Virginia who came up with the idea after his second rehab stint in 2006. A friend sent him texts about sobriety every morning as Foster traveled to work "feeling crazy." The messages made him feel less alone, so he started forwarding them to others on the mend. Soon a business was born: $3.95 a month for daily bytes of inspiration sent to any cell phone.
So far the start-up has attracted more than 700 subscribers and forged deals to provide nibbles of wisdom from the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Users can tailor the service to get a recovery message one day, and pearls from the Dalai Lama the next. Foster is in talks with other self-help icons to expand his offerings, and he recently spent a week camped out in front of Oprah Winfrey's Chicago studios in a bid for support. No luck yet, but Foster is taking it one day at a time.
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Suzanne Smalley returned to Newsweek as a national correspondent in July 2007 after spending three years covering police and crime for the Boston Globe. At the Globe she broke several major stories, including news of the federal indictment of three Boston police officers and a feature story documenting how police and clergy arranged a secret truce between two of Boston's most violent street gangs. She also won awards for her expose on excessive state trooper salaries and for a series of articles about the fatal police shooting of a college student celebrating outside Fenway Park in the wake of the Red Sox American League Championship victory over the Yankees.
Prior to her three-year stint at the Globe from 2004 to 2007, Smalley worked at Newsweek as a reporter covering the 2004 presidential campaign as part of Newsweek's Campaign Special Project Team. In that position, she followed the campaigns of several Democratic candidates across the country, filing behind the scenes reporting for a Newsweek special issue published immediately after the election. The National Magazine Awards recognized the project, awarding Newsweek the prestigious best single-topic issue honor. The reporting was later used in a book titled "Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future."
Before her election coverage, Smalley covered several major breaking news stories for Newsweek, including the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, the disappearance of Chandra Levy, and the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping.
A native of Coral Gables, Florida, Smalley graduated from Georgetown University magna cum laude and received a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School.
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