The New York Times today profiles Kerron Rhaday, 16, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer and is now living with her older sister, Sharon Rhaday, 37, who is her legal guardian. The piece details how Rhaday has been helped by the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, which is supported by the New York Neediest Cases Fund), highlighting the importance of such charity to provide counseling, school tuition and more to ensure these kids don’t fall through the cracks after a devastating loss.

In July, Kerron started seeing Emma Dorfman, a social worker at the agency, weekly. “The counseling really helps,” Kerron said. “Emma, she helps you down the right path.”

The right path was hard to find after her mother’s death.

“When you have a mom,” Kerron said, “and see her every day like that, for me it was hard to concentrate a lot in school, because most times I would cry and stuff.”

Kerron, who had been a 10th grader at Sheepshead Bay High School, in Brooklyn, missed class to care for her mother.

She did not return to school after her mother died. “It’s stupid decisions, but at the time that’s what was best for me, I felt,” Kerron said.

In the fall, she started attending classes at an alternative high school program at the Jewish Board center, where she sees Ms. Dorfman. The one-year program helps students get back on track before returning to a mainstream high school, Ms. Dorfman said.

As if it wasn’t enough to witness her own mother’s death, a little 5-year-old girl has to testify in the murder trial of Manuel Urango, accused of shooting Alia Ansari in the head while she walked her daughter to preschool. That poor kid is going to need some serious counseling.

Her daughter, who was 3 years old at the time of the October 2006 incident, sat on her father’s lap while testifying. A prosecutor asked her several times whether Urango was the man who killed her mother, but the girl said she didn’t want to talk about it.

“She doesn’t want to answer,” a court-appointed interpreter answered for the child, who speaks Farsi.

Urango was arrested on a parole violation within an hour of the killing because his car matched a description given by witnesses, authorities said. He was charged with murder four months later because tests revealed gunshot residue on his hands.

At least one child, age 11, was killed along with her parents in Arkansas from trauma as a tornado hit their home. So far, death totals are at least 44.

ATKINS, Arkansas — Authorities went door-to-door early Wednesday searching for more victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped the roof off a shopping mall, pummeled mobile homes and blew apart warehouses as they tore across four states. At least 44 people were reported dead throughout the South.

The victims included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and seven in Kentucky, emergency officials said. Among those killed were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.

An “underworld” tipster pointed private investigators to a reservoir outside of where the McCann family vacationed in Portugal, claiming the little girl had been raped and murdered and dumped there.

Correia said contacts told him that the girl was raped, murdered and her body dumped within 48 hours of her disappearance, the Daily Mail reported.

The lawyer said he believed she was killed, weighted down and thrown from a pumping tower into the reservoir, the paper said.

“I am convinced this is the place. It’s not overlooked, it has easy access by car and if you threw the body from the tower the water is 55-feet deep there,” Correia told the Daily Mail. “The divers have already found a cord tied in knots down there, right below the tower. I have given it to the police.”

Six divers found an approximately 5-yard-long piece of nylon cord in their search, the Daily Mail reported.

A 4 year old boy found himself in a very precarious situation when he went and got his little head stuck in the washer machine. His mother, who couldn’t pry the youngster’s head out, finally called the fire department who dismantled the machine and released the 4 year old boy to his crazy antics.

Their 4-year-old son became trapped inside their washing machine.

At first Jennifer Hasseman says she thought little Donivan was just playing, “My oldest son came up to me and said ‘Mom Donivan’s head is stuck in the washer’.”

Jennifer and her husband tried to free Donivan using a crow bar, but she says, “his one leg was bent and his back was compressed against the agitator.”