Montana Group Collecting Paper Hearts For Newtown - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - It started as a way for one Montana family to talk about the tragic school shooting of 26 children and adults. It's blossoming into an international movement to build a chain of handmade paper hearts to stretch from Billings, Mont., to Newtown, Conn.
    
Gala Thompson and her family's Paper Hearts Across America estimate it would take about 19 million of the small paper hearts to connect the two cities.
    
They don't actually plan to stretch the chain of hearts across the nation. But they're asking people all over the country and the world to send them that number so they can deliver the hearts to the residents of Newtown and show them there's still good in the world.
    
The Billings Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/UmsVfd ) the response is growing, with more than 10,000 handmade hearts already sent from as far away as China and Australia.
    
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)