He quit his high-paying job to build beds for kids who sleep on the floor

A simple project to help a family in need stopped Luke Mickelson in his tracks.

CNN Hero Luke Mickelson

In 2012, he and his family were inspired to build and donate a bunk bed after learning there were local children who slept on the floor.

“This little girl had a nest of clothes, it looked like a little bird’s nest. And that’s what she slept on, that’s what her bed was,” Mickelson said. “When we delivered the bed, she hugged it and just couldn’t let go.”

Shocked to discover how widespread this need was in his close-knit community, Mickelson founded Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit that builds and delivers beds to children in need.

“It was such an eye-opener to me,” he recalled. “I sat there in silence thinking, ‘Is that really what’s going on?’”

Born and raised in Idaho, Mickelson, now 41, was a high school quarterback-turned-family-man. A churchgoer with a thriving career, he coached his kids’ sports teams and fished in the nearby river. But when he met children who were sleeping on the floor, his idyllic life changed course.

“I had no clue about what the need was,” Mickelson said. “There’s kids next door whose parents are struggling just to put food on the table, clothes on their back, a roof over their head. A bed was just a luxury.”

Using safety guidelines and his daughter’s bunk bed as a template, Mickelson started buying wood and supplies to build beds with his own money. He recruited friends and family members to help around the holidays.

As word spread, interest and involvement from his and other communities surged – along with Mickelson’s bunk bed output.

The top 10 CNN Heroes of 2018 show that passion + action = change. Florence Phillips, 87, is the founder and director of the ESL In-Home Program in Carson City, Nevada. Phillips, far left, and an army of about 200 volunteers have helped teach English and provide citizenship classes to immigrants in the area for free.

Phillips worked for years in Kenya, Guatemala and Jamaica, teaching English and focusing on community-building projects. When she returned to the US she eventually settled in Nevada, where immigrants make up roughly 20% of the state's population. "My students ... are very proud about being here, learning English, learning our culture," she says. "I see the pride when they say, 'I am an American.'" Meet the rest of the top 10 and vote for CNN Hero of the Year.

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While working on her graduate school thesis, Stackable was surprised to learn her home state of Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in America. Here, prisoners meditate and stretch before their creative writing class with Stackable. "It's a sacred place where you can write, and you can feel free to share your writing and trust people in a place where no one trusts anybody," Stackable says.

While still in college, Maria Rose Belding launched MEANS, a free online platform that connects businesses with extra food to charities that feed the hungry. She was dismayed that up to 40% of America's food goes to waste.

Run largely by high school and college students, the nonprofit has helped redistribute more than 1.8 million pounds of food since 2015. "MEANS aims to make it easier to donate food than to throw it in the dumpster. We're like a bridge that hasn't existed before," Belding says.

Luke Mickelson of Twin Falls, Idaho, is the founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit that makes and distributes beds for children in need. Mickelson started crafting the beds out of his garage in 2012, and the organization has grown to include more than 120 chapters nationwide.

Mickelson was shocked to learn that there were needy children in his town who were forced to sleep on the floor because they had no beds. "There's kids next door whose parents are struggling just to put food on the table, clothes on their back, a roof over their head," Mickelson says. "A bed was just a luxury." Using safety guidelines and his daughter's bunk bed as a template, Mickelson started using his own money to buy wood and supplies to build beds for these children.

Dr. Ricardo Pun-Chong's nonprofit, Inspira, has provided free housing, meals and overall support for sick children and their families as they receive treatment. The organization has helped more than 900 families who've come from all over Peru.

Far from home and loved ones, and unable to pay for a place to stay in Lima, many families found themselves homeless while fighting for their children's lives. Seeing the situation day after day, Pun-Chong decided to start a shelter. "The shelter is a very special place," he says. "We not only wanted people to have a place to sleep and food to eat, we also wanted to create a space to help the kids be cured. It's a place with a lot of love."

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