Living

Northwestern Mutual’s mission is quite a lofty goal: To make the communities they serve the most financially secure in the world. “Given our success here in St. Louis, we’re trying to serve the community from both a client perspective and a charitable perspective,” says Gerard Hempstead, managing partner at the company’s St. Louis network office. His office has a goal of giving at least $500,000 in monetary donations and 5,000 hours of community service before 2015. “It’s actually stated in our vision and we track it,” he says.

When St. Charles resident Justine Riggs rescued two sister Weimaraners four years ago, she wasn’t thinking of becoming an author. But necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and a family Thanksgiving trip showed her how difficult it can be to find hotels and restaurants that accommodate dogs. In fact, at one restaurant where the family went inside, leaving the dogs (still within eyeshot) in the car, she says, “I could see (one dog) turning around in the seat. What I didn’t realize was that she was ripping a hole in it! She really did not like that we were inside and she was out there.”

Dr. Steven Couch is opening up a whole new world to patients. The Washington University oculofacial plastic surgeon at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital performs upper and lower eyelid surgeries, correcting droopiness to expand patients’ field of vision and improve the appearance of the eyes.

Whether you’re simply throwing down a blanket in the backyard and enjoying a meal al fresco or tasting exotic fare abroad, food poisoning can turn a good time bad in a hurry. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year, approximately one in six Americans (about 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of food-borne diseases.