Laurels & lances: Helping, parking and paying

Laurel: To stopping to help. Good Samaritans Kim and Alex Kelley, who work at Kelley’s Pizza at the corner of routes 22 at 819 in Salem, dropped everything to rush out of their business to lend a hand to three injured passengers and a bus driver on a Westmoreland Transit Bus that was struck by a tractor-trailer along the busy highway on June 13.

The pair attempted to comfort and calm the injured until firefighters and ambulance crews arrived. Kim Kelley still had blood on her hands as she described the scene to reporters at the scene.

The crash involved a Go Westmoreland mini-bus. The majority of that fleet is used for a paratransit program that provides door-to-door service to elderly, low-income and special needs riders.

Lance: To not staying inside the lines. It’s parking, people, not rocket science. You shouldn’t have to have evidence of your diagonal occupation of multiple spaces documented on a Facebook page. But apparently some do. There are probably those who think that Tom Moses’ social media round-up of bad parking isn’t polite. Well, neither is encroaching on other drivers’ space in parking lots.

Laurel: To a burden lifted. Student loans are everywhere in the news. The crushing load. The increase over what they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. The questions of how to handle them. The candidates talking about it on the road to the 2020 Democratic primary. But it can all be just a little distant.

That’s what makes the settlement Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro reached with Student CU Connect CUSO refreshingly concrete. It’s not theoretical. It’s cut and dried. Almost 600 former ITT Tech students left floundering when the school closed up shop, including shuttering campuses at the Pittsburgh Mills mall and in Robinson, are eligible for $5.3 million in debt relief.

Paying back loans for an education you chose and received is a big enough load to carry. Paying back loans for an education you were sold but never got? That’s like taking out a car loan and making payments without getting keys.