Cheers to Linda and Barry Ernhardt of Renfrew. Their 5-year-old son Braden recently was named the 2014-15 Pennsylvania Elks Child of the Year.

Braden is a remarkable kid. Born addicted to cocaine and opiates, he has already faced a host of health problems, including spina bifida, hydrocephalus, microcephaly, learning disabilities and epilepsy. Through constant challenges and therapy, Braden has maintained a love of people — he doesn't know what shyness is. His sociability was one of the reasons the Elks selected Braden for the goodwill ambassador role.

But as unique and remarkable as Brade in, his parents are even more remarkable. Veteran foster parents, the Ernhardts took Braden into their home when he was nine days old. They formally adopted him at 18 months.

Linda and Barry Ernhardt have been foster parents to 58 babies since April 1995.

Ricki Hood, the Elks Home Service nurse who nominated Braden for Child of the Year, praises the Ernhardts' dedication to their son. Hood visits them about once per month to attend parent-teacher meetings with Braden's school and to help with insurance issues. She credits the Ernhardts for making sure Braden gets to all of his appointments for therapy and medical help.

Their love and nurture shines through the personality of their adopted boy. Braden is a pure people-person because of the way they're raising him.

Let's strip away the fact that a 17-year-old Seneca Valley High School senior is alleged to have committed a criminal offense by selling marijuana-laced brownies to classmates. Let's instead take an academic look at the student's business model.Police said the youth baked $140 worth of pot into a batch of brownies. That's somewhere between a quarter-pound and a half-ounce of marijuana, depending on the potency. Apparently that was enough pot to have sickened at least one buyer.Baked into a standard 9-by-13-inch pan, one batch would yield a dozen brownies measuring 3 by 3 1/4 inches. Factoring in the price of eggs, oil, brownie mix and energy for the oven — and assuming free labor — the cost per brownie is about 33 cents; sell a dozen brownies for $1 each and make a 200 percent profit.Add the $140 worth of marijuana into the equation, and the cost per brownie spikes to $12. With a selling price of $15 apiece — assuming you can find a dozen customers in a high school with $15 in their pockets — the profit margin drops to only 20 percent.Simply put, there's a wider profit margin selling straight brownies than there is selling the marijuana brownies. And the straight brownies probably taste better, too.And when you get down to it, we can't really strip away the fact that selling pot brownies is a crime, particularly in a zero-tolerance zone like a school. Court costs, fines and attorney fees literally crush the business model, as one student is about to discover the hard way.It's an old and true saying: Crime doesn't pay.

Cheers to Saxonburg Little-Leaguer Vohn Sahli for getting a first-inning base hit during a game Wednesday evening — and to his grandfather, Bob Jackman of Butler, who witnessed the hit.That's a perfectly normal everyday scenario, except for the fact that Jackman, a plumbing contractor, was severely injured a month ago when a ditch collapsed on him; and thoughtful parents and coaches moved Wednesday's game to a location where Jackman could watch.After three weeks in University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital — the first nine days of that in intensive care — Jackman is continuing his rehabilitation at Condordia at Cabot nursing home in Cabot. His injuries included collapsed lungs, 15 fractured ribs, a shattered thigh bone and compression damage to his leg muscles.Jackman's grandson's team, the Scrapers, play their games at SEBCO Park, about a mile away from Condordia, but there's a ballfield at Concordia where younger children play tee-ball.The idea to move the game to Concordia originally came from Christie Nicolazzo, the mother of one of Vohn's teammates. She posed the idea to Jeff Stull, the coach of the Scrapers, who contacted the coach of the opposing team, Jeff Mullen. Saxonburg Little League officials were happy to have the Little League and tee-ball teams swap fields for one night so Jackman could watch his grandson's team play.It was a beautiful gesture of kindness.