Johnny Bobbitt Jr is a tale of kindness being repaid manifold #AtoZChallenge

When Kate McClure's car ran out of gas one night on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the young woman was definitely scared. She was weighing the risks of hiking to the nearest gas station when she noticed a bearded homeless man walking up to her car. Unsure of what to do, she stayed inside her car as he approached. But even she could not have imagined the events that occurred next.

The man, Johnny Bobbitt Jr, asked her if she was okay and when he realized her car had broken down, told her to stay inside and lock the doors. He then hiked three kilometers to the nearest gas station and came back with a filled gas can. The homeless man had used up the only money he had on him - $20 - to buy her fuel. And Kate did not even have money to pay him back that night, which he did not mind, happy to see her drive off safely.

Kate was determined to repay this kindness though and often dropped by that street corner, dropping off warm clothing, water, food and money. She would then watch as Johnny - a former U.S. Marine Corps war veteran and paramedic who had fallen on bad times - would go and share it all with his homeless friends.

Watching his constant selflessness with everyone around him, Kate decided she needed to do more. She set up a GoFundMe campaign and let the world know about this man, hoping to raise around $10,000 ( Rs 6.5 lakhs) for him. The world though disagreed with Kate there. Numerically, at least.

In less than a month, $40,000 (Rs 26 lakhs) were donated by strangers who wanted to help the man return back into society. If you were surprised by those numbers, well, you may want to sit down for the next few sentences.

On seeing this huge donation, Johnny begged Kate to end the campaign because he felt other needy people deserved the money being given to him and Kate complied with his wishes. The campaign was shut down for all of 12 minutes though, because Kate's inbox was overflooded with messages from strangers demanding she keep the campaign open because they still wanted to help him.

The campaign was finally shut down after a month. In one month, strangers across the world raised $400,000 (Rs 2.6 crores) for Johnny Bobbitt Jr.

Since then, Kate has assigned a lawyer and a financial advisor who have set up trust funds for the war veteran, providing him a yearly salary as well as a retirement fund. Slowly reintegrating him back into society, the money has helped buy a new home for him as well as get his dream truck - a 1999 Ford Ranger!

And yes, Johnny still donates a part of that yearly salary he is given to various organizations and people who helped him over the years.

Final thoughts:

• In this story, it occurred to me that both Kate and Johnny went out of their way to help someone they did not know. It was a circle of kindness in the end with rich rewards for all who were touched by it. 
• Before you started reading this post, did you know of a single stock in the world that could convert $20 into $400,000 ( 20,000 %) in just one month? Now you do. It is named Kindness. And here is the best part - you already own it. You just need to know to use it.

Author's note:

This is part of my #AtoZChallenge where I will be focusing on Real Life Heroes of Kindness and Compassion.

The list for this year's (2018) Heroes of Kindness can be found here.

Of course, I have been tracking these lovely human beings for years now and have found children as young as six years old and old women in their eighties from across the world who will restore your faith in humanity. You can find the entire list of Real-life Heroes of Kindness and Compassion here.