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.

Data released from the Labor Department showed the U.S. economy lost 140,000 jobs in the month of December, and it appears women accounted for all of the job losses.

For the month of December, the data show men overall gained 16,000 jobs, while women lost 156,000, for a total loss to the economy for that month of 140,000.

Not just women, minority women. The data shows Black and Hispanic women lost jobs in December, while white women gained. In December, Hispanic women have the highest unemployment rate at 9.1%, followed by Black women at 8.4%, with white women at 5.7%. The data does not break out other racial or ethnic identities in unemployment rates.

Overall, the unemployment rate in this country in December was 6.7%.

For months, analysts and economists have been pointing to the number of women leaving the workforce, for two main reasons. Women, and especially women of color, disproportionately work in some of the hardest-hit areas of the economy like retail, restaurants, education and hospitality.

Second, women have been more likely than men to leave a job to stay home with kids who are remote learning or whose daycare has closed.

"Those sectors are less likely to have flexibility, so when employers are inflexible or women can't come to work because of caregiving responsibilities — they have to exit the workforce," C. Nicole Mason, president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, told CNN.

December’s Labor statistics were a blow to the economy, after analysts had expected small gains the report showed a huge drop. This was the first time since April that U.S. employers overall cut jobs.

In April, 22 million jobs were cut, and according to the December jobs report, the economy still has 9.9 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic.

Of those 9.9 million jobs that have not returned since February, the Labor Department says roughly 5.4 million were held by women and 4.4 million were held by men.

WALKER, Mich. — The owners of a Michigan butcher shop lost a whole day's deposit money. But just as they were giving up hope, their luck turned around.

Tim and Teresa Sobie of Sobie Meats accidentally dropped their bank pouch on the ground.

You would have needed an eagle eye to spot the pouch, and that's exactly what one driver had when he reversed to the money on the ground.

"Somebody came back through and backed up and they, they took the deposit," said Tim. "And at that point, we're like, 'Wow, all day has gone by.’ And they never called because we had a deposit slip in there with our name obviously, and even our phone number is on there. And nobody called to say, 'Hey, we found your deposit,' etcetera, etcetera."

When the money wasn't returned within several hours, the couple called the cops. But before officers got to the shop, the good Samaritan arrived.

"Our good Samaritan came in and he said, 'Hey, I found this.' And he said, 'I drove around front, and you were closed.' He said, ‘You know, I started at 8 o’clock in the morning, I just got out of work.’ So, he brought it to us,” said Tim.

Tim wouldn't go so far as to say how much money the pouch had.

"So, it was enough that it was—it would have hurt, not having that deposit to go to the bank, like anybody else," he said. "If you took one of your days of pay away, it would hurt, right? So yeah, that would have stung. So, we're just so grateful that he turned that back in."

But instead of a loss, there was a sense of relief knowing a good Samaritan was looking out for them.

"We were just elated that somebody, you know, after that long, turned it back, and he said everything is there," Tim said. "You know, I didn't take anything out of there. So he had never been in the shop before his first time in, and he was doing an act of kindness like that. So, that was pretty, pretty phenomenal."

Tim says the man who gave back the money got a free gift card as a thank you and says they'll get him hooked up with a nice cut of meat.

This story was originally published by Angeline McCall at WXMI.

TOOELE COUNTY, Utah —

Brent Kolan and his two sons got lost in Utah's West Desert.

Now, having been rescued, they're speaking out about what happened.

Kolan raced off-road vehicles for decades and passed that passion for the sport down to his kids.

"I had been out there 50 times. Don't know how we got so turned around and the wind came up," Kolan said.

Kolan took his kids out for a quick ride, but it turned into a search-and-rescue mission Kolan and his two sons won't soon forget.

Watch the full story in the video above.