10 good news stories from Butler County in 2025
While the adage goes “no news is good news,” the Butler Eagle did report plenty of stories that could widely be considered good news in 2025.
Over the span of 2025, the Butler Eagle team twice wrote about bystanders rescuing others from burning vehicles, covered several updates at the Butler Farm Show grounds and often told stories about people making a positive impact in their communities.
The below stories represent some of the ‘good news’ across Butler County in 2025.
Slippery Rock University student-athlete Mike Crist in April put his life on the line to save a complete stranger by pulling him out of a burning vehicle on Interstate 79 following a fiery crash. The incident occurred in Muddy Creek Township, just south of the junction with Route 422.
In another instance, on Dec. 22, bystanders jumped into action, saving another man’s life along Brownsdale Road in Forward Township. The group used a trailer hitch to break the window and a fire extinguisher to suppress the flames and smoke so they could pull the man out of the vehicle.
Zane Slater’s decision to donate one of his kidneys to his mother, Anna Castello, was easy for him to make, but not quite as easy for her to accept.
Twenty years ago, Castello received her first kidney transplant from a living donor — her sister Sarah Rowland — after her kidney began failing five years earlier.
She said everything was fine until she contracted a severe case of COVID-19 five years ago that diminished the function of that kidney. She said she was placed on a transplant list about a year and a half ago, while her sons and their fiances had their blood tested to see if they would be suitable donors.
Zane was a match and arranged to donate one of his kidney’s to his mother.
In early 2025, Officer James Green of Butler Area School District’s Broad Street Elementary School received the National RISE recognition, an honor from the U.S. Department of Education.
He has since been named the security director for Butler Area School District.
During their annual Martinis with Monet event on Wednesday evening, July 9, at the municipal center, officials announced that Cranberry Township Community Chest would be known as the Cranberry Foundation moving forward.
“It was the right time to rebrand ourselves to reflect the growth that we’ve been going through as a better representation of what we’re doing,” President Jerry Andree said.
The community rallied around Helen Comperatore and her family in the year following the death of Corey Comperatore. Former Buffalo Township fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed at then candidate President Donald Trump’s July 13, 2024, campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds.
The day before the anniversary of his death, the community gathered for “Corey’s Cruise” and a parade in Saxonburg. Later, on the anniversary, Helen Comperatore gathered with members of the community at the Butler Farm Show grounds where she unveiled a statue that is now displayed at the location.
Tobias Jost went two years not knowing if his “unknown friend” had survived, unsure if the stem cells extracted from his blood stream on Nov. 29, 2016, made the trans-Atlantic flight from Germany to Pittsburgh, where a leukemia patient was waiting.
took another six years before he would meet the recipient of his donated stem cells, Tim Lefever, of Franklin Township, who traveled to Germany in May to finally meet the person who saved his life.
On Sunday night, June 20, Mason Martin stood before a packed house at the stadium for the “I Believe” vigil, his first public appearance since that life-changing day when he suffered a near-fatal injury during the opening game of the 2023 football season.
The Butler Farm Show hosted its first rooster crowing competition as a way to give children a way to compete and celebrate their birds amid a time when the bird flu has kept such gatherings from happening in the past.
Moon Doh was named as music director for the Butler County Symphony Orchestra at a gala event on Sunday, May 4. Doh was one of the three finalists.
In January, the Butler Eagle invited two men with different political beliefs to speak in the same room. Despite their different beliefs, the men, two letters to the editor writers, held a civil conversation in the Eagle’s conference room.
Later, in July, four judge of elections from across Butler County and from varying parties also held a conversation in that same conference room.
