An Arizona mother who lost her three children and her ex-husband in a plane crash in the Superstition Mountains has been lent with support of friends and acquaintances.

Karen Perry, of Apache Junction, Ariz., has experienced a series of struggles in recent years and her two children were suffering from health complications (epilepsy and autism).

From news.yahoo.com:

“They were just great kids,” Mark Blomgren, principal at the school in Apache Junction where the two oldest children attended, told the Arizona Republic. “All the teachers were naturally shocked. They cared about them and wondered how their mom was doing and they were just hit pretty hard. Logan and Morgan were just special kids that the teachers really bonded with.”

Crews continued working Friday in the crags and outcroppings of the mountaintop area just east of Phoenix to finish recovering the remains of the six people aboard, Pinal County sheriff’s spokesman Elias Johnson told The Associated Press. The dead included Perry’s ex-husband, Shawn Perry, 39, who was the pilot.

“No one could have survived that crash,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said.

The software testers at Aspiritech constitute the unusual workforce of a U.S. startup that specializes in finding software bugs by harnessing the talents of young adults with autism.

Aspiritech, a nonprofit in Highland Park, Ill., nurtures these skills while forgiving the quirks that could make adults with autism unemployable.

From news.yahoo.com:

“They exceeded my expectations,” said Dan Tedesco of Shelton, Conn.-based HandHold Adaptive, which took a chance on Aspiritech to test an iPhone application. “There is a pride in their product you don’t usually see in this type of work.”

Aspiritech was founded by Moshe and Brenda Weitzberg after their son, Oran, now 32, was fired from a job bagging groceries. Oran was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when he was 14. He now works at Aspiritech.

“He went from failing at bagging groceries to being one of the best software testers on our team,” said Brenda Weitzberg.

“There have been a couple of attempts in the U.S. and Aspiritech is the one that’s making it,” said Scott Standifer of the University of Missouri’s Disability Policy and Studies office and the organizer of a national conference on adults with autism and employment.