On Oct. 28, The Spokesman-Review ran an article about how this community mobilized to help an uninsured family that lost everything to an August wildfire. It was heartbreak hotel for Josh Kogler, a 12-year-old Elvis impersonator who was left homeless, along with his mother.

But not for long. A woman who didn’t know the Koglers got busy and made sure Josh would have clothes, a guitar and a skateboard. A sporting goods store and music business delivered. A restaurant staged a spaghetti feed to raise money for the family. Graceland sent Elvis memorabilia. Private donations ensured that the Koglers would have a place to live.

A few hours after I read that article, tragedy struck my home. My wife, Laura, was working on a Halloween costume for our son when she collapsed to the floor and died. Now it was my family’s turn to learn about the considerable compassion of this community.

Neighbors rallied to form a comforting cocoon. This paper launched a memorial fund. Friends, co-workers and people I’ve never met assembled an impressive supply line to keep us fed and cared for.

My wife worked here, so telling her story was a given. The Koglers were fortunate to be featured in the newspaper, because unreported tragedies occur daily. I’ve long thought that the reluctance to help others with tax dollars would collapse if society could figure out a way to tell everyone’s story. It seems it only takes the barest of details before we sympathize and open up the pocketbook. Why is that? Is some heartbreak deserved? Do some victims deserve their fate? Even the children?

I don’t have the answers, but I’m certain that people suffer daily from events that are entirely unfair. Do the details really matter? Grief is universal. Nobody signs up for it, but everybody experiences it.

I am deeply grateful for the outpouring of kindness. Believe me, it helps. And yet I know that others who dwell in the shadows of obscurity have suffered even more – partly because their stories are untold, partly because they haven’t been lifted up by the spirit of compassion.

When I told my kids that we’d be traveling for the holidays, my 6-year-old daughter asked me whether this would interfere with her plans to buy a gift for a boy or girl she would never meet. She doesn’t need to know this random child’s story. She doesn’t need to watch the gift being unwrapped. She just knows that heartache is universal.

So is the instinct to help.

Beyond Tampa Street. My neighborhood has already sewn up the title as the Inland Northwest’s best place to live, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate other coves of compassion.

Drop me a line on why you think your neighborhood has the chops to be deemed Second Best in the Inland Northwest.

Meanwhile in politics … It seems there was an election with some earth-shaking results. I’m just now catching up, but off the top of my head I can’t think of a bigger loser statewide than Dino Rossi.

His party lost more seats in the Legislature, and the property rights initiative he strongly endorsed was beaten like a rented mule. He also sat on the sidelines last year during the failed attempt to rescind the critical transportation tax he voted for as a legislator.

Rossi was very close to becoming governor in 2004, but his decisions since then have made that a longer shot if he were to try again.