Two more examples of feature leads

Creative Feature Leads (Description and Anecdote)

Seattle spine surgery gave child his boyhood back
By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — Clutching his zamponia, a traditional Bolivian flute, Alfonso Figueroa stepped in front of his classmates and their parents during a recent Mother's Day celebration at his school. For about three minutes he played a lively song called "Celia." Then he grinned, bowed and leaned against the back wall, exhausted.
That he had enough breath at all is a big step for Alfonso.
"I didn't think I could finish," he said. "But I just kept going and going and trying."
Last year, thanks to the support of benefactors in the Seattle area and under the watch of schoolchildren and the media, the 12-year-old boy lived in Issaquah for nine months while doctors fixed his severely bent spine.
Before, his body was twisted by tuberculosis and his insides were so compressed that doctors feared he had lost 30 percent of his lung capacity. He couldn't eat much without throwing up. He was in frequent pain and in danger of dying.
Now back at the all-boys orphanage in Bolivia that he calls home, Alfonso is, by all accounts, faring well.

Plenty of cheers to greet Griffey
By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter
The cheering for Ken Griffey Jr. began when the Safeco Field gates opened Friday, around 5:15 p.m. Fans streamed down the aisles, many wearing their old No. 24 Mariners jerseys with "Griffey" stitched on the back.
They cheered when Griffey took his practice cuts — hat flipped backward, a smile on his face, the familiar looping left-handed swing bopping baseballs into the right-field bleachers. They cheered when Griffey trotted to the outfield to shag fly balls.
And they cheered loudest about an hour and a half later — an almost three-minute long, stadium-wide standing ovation — when Griffey, making his first appearance in Seattle since being traded to Cincinnati in 2000, was welcomed back home in a pregame ceremony.
"Never could I imagine it would be like this coming back," Griffey said from a podium at the plate, flanked by former teammates Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez and Mariners executives Howard Lincoln, Chuck Armstrong and John Ellis.
"I spent 11 years here, 11 wonderful years here," Griffey said. "I met my beautiful wife here. Two out of my three kids were born here. This place will be home."