LA VISTA, Neb. —

Many people celebrated Christmas far from home, leaning on Zoom calls and mailed gifts to get them through.

When a package didn't make it home, this family worried a tradition would be lost until a stranger stepped in to help.

Like many families across the world, the Negrete family traded Christmas celebrations with grandma and grandpa for conversations over Zoom.

"We were used to doing Christmas morning together," said Kylie Negrete. "We want them to be a part of our Christmas morning because they used to live next door to us."

Negrete asked her mother to send homemade Christmas cookies from Tennessee because that's what they ate together every holiday season.

"They mean so much to us because we weren't going to see my parents this holiday season," she said. "That's the only thing I was going to get to see are the cookies made by mom and by my stepdad."

By Christmas Eve, the cookies hadn't arrived until Negrete received a phone call by a man named Mike, who found a package addressed to her lying in the middle of the street.

Mike delivered the desserts to her home and Negrete was overwhelmed with thankfulness.

"I cried and I felt silly for crying but it was just the one thing I was going to get from my parents is that little bit of them are these cookies that they made from their heart," she said.

Although it was a smaller Christmas morning than years past, sometimes a little piece of home is just what you need.

"Even during these dark times where there's all these unknowns, a pandemic, everybody's lives have just been uprooted, it just goes to show that there's so much good in people," said Negrete.

First lady Jill Biden made an unscheduled stop at the US Capitol on Friday to thank members of the National Guard who have been guarding the complex in the weeks since the Capitol riot on January 6.

Up to 25,000 members of the National Guard were activated to guard the Capitol for President Joe Biden’s inauguration. In the days since, a number of Guard members remain on hand.

According to the National Guard, 10,600 Guard members remained stationed at the US Capitol as of Thursday evening. Nearly 7,000 members were expected to remain guarding the Capitol through the end of the month.

The first lady delivered a basket containing cookies to some of the National Guard members. When she exited the motorcade, she spoke with some commanding officers and addressed several dozen service members who stood at attention.

Biden then thanked them for protecting her family.

“The National Guard will always hold a special place in the hearts of all the Bidens,” the first lady said, referring to her step-son Beau Biden who was a member of the Delaware Army National Guard.

Biden made the stop at the Capitol one day after members of the Guard were briefly told they had to take their resting breaks in a parking garage, prompting bipartisan outage from some members of Congress. They have since been allowed to take their resting breaks inside of the Capitol.

Google is taking a step back, recently announcing they won’t track users as they browse the internet after ending support for third-party cookies.

These cookies have been allowing digital advertising and ad tech to thrive.

”That ad is placing a third-party cookie in your browser, so what's happening is that Chrome and other browsers that are doing this, are taking that cookie and they are reselling it to someone else. So that’s what they're saying they are going to stop doing,” said Donald McLaughlin, a cybersecurity consultant.

He said while Google is not going to support third-party cookies, they are still keeping some of your information.

“They're not going to stop tracking you based on your searches or email,” McLaughlin said.

The more information of ours that’s out there, the bigger the push to keep it out of those companies’ hands.

“We see a movement towards more privacy,” he said.

“Surveillance capitalism has been growing over the last 20 years. The technological abilities to frankly spy on people and track their every movement are really profound,” said Dr. Jen Golbeck, Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland.

So what does this mean for your privacy?

“This move by Google suggests some of the big players are starting to think maybe we don't need to track every individual in every way we technically can,” Dr. Golbeck said. “There may be ways to make the money they want and not keep all that individual information”

One concept is to group people together, rather than targeting individuals.

“The idea here I think is to create groups of customers instead of individually identifiable tracking opportunities so they can pre-segment these customer groups for advertisers based on their buying behaviors,” said Melissa Akaka, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Denver.

For ad companies, it’s going to change the way they present those advertisements. For brands, it could change their customer relationships.

“Companies are going to have to really think through who their customers are and how they can build longer lasting relationships with them,” Akaka said.

Although Google is making this change, not many other big tech companies are following suit.

“Apple is really the only other big tech company we see pushing privacy in a really serious way, and frankly more seriously than Google is,” Dr. Golbeck said. “Facebook hasn't really shown an interest in reducing that kind of individual knowledge, that's really the cornerstone of their business at this point.”

She said Google is simply getting ahead of future policy.

“I don’t think the tech companies care what people want. They care about making money. But if people want their privacy protected and they're going to push for regulation that affects the company, they're going to respond in that way and I think they see that coming. There is this new public understanding and push for more privacy,” Dr. Golbeck said.

A Maryland baker is doing what she can to give back to the community one cookie at a time.

Julie Rewers' latest project involves making sure kids have water to drink in school.

"We have raspberry lemonade, which is a raspberry lemon sugar cookie; we have chocolate chip; Oriole dreamsicle, which is an orange cream sugar cookie; and then oatmeal raisin," Rewers said.

Those are just a few of the cookie flavors Rewers sells at farmers markets and food truck events. For the Baltimore baker and entrepreneur, each sale is important. She calls her business "Cookies for a Cause Maryland" because a portion of the proceeds go to help people in need.

"I usually donate 20% of my proceeds to the food bank, but I will also be donating to other specific local causes," Rewers said.

Her latest mission is to provide bottled water to students in Baltimore City and Baltimore County public schools. It's a project she started March 1 after seeing on social media that water fountains wouldn't be in operation because of the pandemic.

"So far, we've donated 4,600 water bottles and about 300 to 400 cases of water to about eight different schools," Rewers said.

She lives by the motto: "Cookies will save the world."

"So, cookies will save the world. It's definitely a motto that I go by. It's something that seems so small and, like, doesn't seem it will get you very far," Rewers said.

But it does go far to help others, one cookie at a time.