Many times we write about people because they have some connection to a news story. But after the news passes, we seem to forget them. Today, we’re checking in with some of the newsmakers from the past year to see how they are coping with the losses or celebrating the successes of the incidents that got them in the news in the first place.

• Scott Bosch, former CEO Harrison Medical Center

Bosch, who was CEO at Harrison for a decade, retired last July. While at Harrison, Bosch oversaw the hospital’s affiliation with Franciscan Health System, which came shortly before he decided to retire. Since then, he’s been keeping busy “trying to stay physically active.”

“It seems like you have to stop living when you’re working,” he said. “Now I’ve stopped working and started living.”

He is focusing on his health — mind, body and spirit. He runs, swims and does yoga, each four times a week. He recently completed a triathlon.

“When I was working, I always had an excuse not to exercise,” he said. “Now I don’t have that excuse.”

Another of his adventures was to attend Burning Man in the middle of the desert in Nevada.

“I promised my son that I’d do that with him after I retired,” he said. “It was a very harsh environment. It was an amazing life experience, but not a vacation by any means.”

There, amidst sleep deprivation, he was able to have an intense bonding experience with his 32-year-old son, he said.

Travel has also been on his mind.

“My wife just retired from 37 years as a hospital pharmacist,” he said. “While she was working, I did the laundry and the cleaning. I also was the sous chef, helping her so that when she came home she didn’t have to do all that.”

But now that she’s retired, the couples plans to travel. They have three sons, in Denver, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

“We plan to spend a month with each one of them,” he said. “We;re going to rent a vacation by owner house at each place and just live like they do.”

But Bosch and his wife will remain Kitsap Countians. They’ll keep there house here.

“We’ll always be a part of this community,” he said. “We have so many friends here.”

Bosch also volunteers at the hospital, with the Salvation Army, and in the AVID program with the school district.

Does he think about the hospital?

“From time to time,” he said. “Now with David Schultz as president, its in good hands. He’s a wonderful choice and he’ll do a fantastic job. Now is the time for me to back away. I’ve moved on.”

He’s only 61, he said, and has “ a lot of good years left.”

Bosch said he’s very “content with his life.”

“I’m very grateful for everything I have,” he said. “I have my health and I am surrounded by people who love me.”

• Jack Doninger, rescued from the waters of Sinclair Inlet

He was just going to the post office to get the mail.

But he ended up under water in Sinclair Inlet, at the bottom of Trenton Avenue.

Doninger, a resident of Bremerton, says he’s doing “pretty good,” nine months after the breaks on his car failed and he ended up going underwater in Sinclair Inlet.

“I was heading down the hill and something went wrong with my brakes,” he said. “I couldn’t stop the car. I didn’t want to hit a house or hurt anyone and cause any more misery. So, I steered right between the house and the tree and ended up in the water.”

As the car sailed through the air, he said he thought, “This is it.”

And then the car hit the water at at least 75 miles an hour. He knows that was the speed because he looked at his speedometer coming down the hill.

The car was submerged quickly, he recalled. He saw the water rising. He tried to get the door open, but couldn’t. The next thing he knew there was someone there trying to knock out the glass in the car window.

Two employees of SafeBoats who were nearby testing a boat for the U.S. Coast Guard. They came to his rescue, as did a neighbor who saw the car go underwater and a Bremerton police officer and firefighter who were first on the scene.

Since that time, he hasn’t had any nightmares and he drives every day to see his wife, who a patient at the Bay Point retirement community.

“I was never scared to get back behind the wheel,” he said. “I figure nothing like that’s going to happen twice.”

He and his wife spent Christmas with their son, Randy, in Port Orchard.

“I feel kind of guilty,” he said. “I didn’t put the (Christmas) lights out on the house this year or put up a tree. “I should have. I just didn’t want to tempt fate and climb on a ladder.”

To date, he hasn’t had the opportunity to meet with the people who saved him and thank them personally.

“That’s something I really want to do,” he said. “They risked their lives for me.”

He has a few aches and pains, but hasn’t had to have anymore physical therapy since he was released from the care center where he was for a couple of months after the accident.

“I feel quite lucky, really,” he said.

• Allan Wodenscheck

This holiday season was much better than the last one for Allan Wodenscheck. Last year he was recovering from a near-fatal car accident.

Wodenscheck, 25, of Bremerton, was on his way to work on a Monday before Christmas (Dec. 16, 2013), when a pickup truck driven by a suspected drunken driver, Andrew Page Smith, 32, of Poulsbo, came at him.

Smith was driving north, having just crossed the bridge, when his truck collided head-on with Wodenscheck’s white Saturn sedan. Wodenscheck had to be extricated from the vehicle and traffic was at a standstill for more than two hours.

Wodenscheck was taken by ambulance to a helicopter pad at the Bainbridge Island Fire Department on Madison Avenue and was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

He underwent surgery to repair a tendon in his left knee and a shattered femur in his left leg. He also has a broken right ankle and a broken collarbone.

To this day, he has no memories of the accident. After months of physical therapy, he returned to his job at AGS Stainless Inc. on Bainbridge Island in March. He was working a desk job for several months. He tried going back to working a physical job packing boxes, but that was too much for him. So now he’s training in sales for the company.

He hasn’t had any lasting physical problems and the doctors have cleared him. But he does notice when the weather pressure changes, he has more pain.

“All of the sudden and for no reason, it’s pain,” he said.

But He’s quick to point out that 2014 hasn’t been all bad. He was married Aug. 23 to his finance, Lynnette, and they are expecting a son on Feb. 10.

“I’m excited and I’m glad to have that to focus on,” he said. “All of that’s brought so much joy to my life. I feel lucky.”

As for the the driver who hit him, Wodenscheck said he was changed with vehicular assault and spent four months in jail and received a year probation.

“He doesn’t have a (driver’s),license and that, I’m glad for,” Wodenscheck said. “I don’t want him to hurt anybody else.”

• Linda Joyce, former executive director of the Kitsap YWCA

Last April, after more than 20 years as the executive director of the YWCA in Bremerton, Linda Joyce took a moment at the Y’s Women of Achievement awards ceremony, to announce that she was retiring.

It took many — including her own staff — by surprise.

“I didn’t tell anybody ahead of time,” she said. “I figured they’d talk me out of it.”

Joyce went to the ceremony directly from Harrison Medical Center where she’d been undergoing treatment for cancer. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2010. She’s had radiation and chemotherapy.

Since her retirement, she’s been working on maintaining her positive attitude and through the help of friends and family, is staying in her home in the Silverdale area. She is getting cleaning and shopping care through the services of Hospice.

“I don’t talk about cancer in a negative way,” she said. “It’s something that I’ve had to deal with.”

Joyce said even before her illness last spring, she was thinking about retirement. Since the first of the year, Joyce had been meditating and praying about her future.

“I’d already gone to the Social Security office to get my ducks in a row,” she said. “I just felt that it was the time to give the opportunity to run the YWCA to another woman. And I’m actually getting excited about it. What better way to show what the YWCA is all about?”

Joyce is spending the holidays with her son, Dion, and grandson, Dion, Jr., who are visiting from California. Her son is a deputy sheriff in LA County. And her grandson, Dion Jr., is a student at California State University, Long Beach, studying dance and theater.

She was able to attend his high school graduation last May in California.

“That was something,” she said. “He’s all grown up now.”

She continues to keep up with what’s going on in Kitsap County and attended the YWCA’s Walk in Her Shoes event last October. She reads the local papers and checks in with her friends on her cellphone often.

But she doesn’t plan on learning to text.

• The James Wright family of Central Kitsap

Nothing is the same for James and Denise Wright and their children. And it shouldn’t be.

Last August they lost their 6-year-old daughter Jenise Paulette Wright to an unthinkable crime.

Jenise was first reported missing as darkness set in Aug. 4 and her body was found at about 11 a.m. Aug. 7. Gabe Gaeta, a neighbor of the Wright family in the Steele Creek Mobile Park in East Bremerton, was arrested Aug. 9, after investigators said they found DNA evidence linking him to Jenise’s rape and murder.

“Everything is very much still right in front of our faces,” said James Wright, Jenise’s father. “We still have flowers from her funeral on the table. Her clothes are still in her dresser, just like the day she left. My wife and I haven’t been able to give them away. Everything is just day-by-day…a lot of crying.”

Wright said he misses how Jenise would greet him when he came home from work.

“She’d jump in the car and say “You’re home. Daddy’s home.”

Although the Wrights’ other children — siblings to Jenise — have been back living with them since October, it’s been hard to think about having a “normal” holiday season.

Wrights’ two boys, 8 and 16, and a daughter, 12, at the time of their sister’s death were taken into custody pending an evaluation of the home setting. They spent about six weeks living with their grandparents in Bellingham.

“We didn’t even put up a (Christmas) tree this year,” he said. “Too many memories. The tree was one of her favorite things. She liked to hang the ornaments.”

Although friends in the couple’s church have been helping them, Wright said finances are hard. Because of the notoriety of then case, he hasn’t been able to get a full time job. He’s been working odd jobs as he gets them to support the family.

“The church has helped us,” he said. “They’re taking care of Christmas gifts. But it’s life that’s difficult right now.”

He said the family is still in counseling. But the children “feel lonely.”

“they still feel traumatized,” he said. “My older son goes to Olympic High and there are an incident — a threat– there recently. He called me to come and get him.”

He said students at Cottonwood Elementary School where Jenise attended kindergarten plans to place a plaque at the school to honor her and he looks forward to seeing that. He said a local motorcycle club had a poker run to support the family and the the community’s help is a “saving grace.”

Jenise was our baby,” he said. “She was our youngest, our last. She was super smart and independent. Even before kindergarten, she could read and do math.”

As for forgiveness, he said he’s forgiven Gaeta, who was 17 ant the time of the crime. he said his wife and his other children are “not there yet.”

“The loss is ours,” he said. “We will carry that for life. But to carry the guilt and pain of hate with us, we don’t need to take that on.”

“We will never forgive the act, we we can forgive him.”

Gaeta pled not guilt. He potentially faces life in prison if convicted of first degree murder with aggravating circumstances. He faces two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree rape of a child. His next court appearance is Feb. 6 for a pre-trial hearing. The trail date has been set for March 9.

He was transferred from juvenile detention to the Kitsap County Jail on Dec. 23, which was his 18th birthday.