The kindness of strangers: share your stories

Have you ever been helped by a total stranger–physically, emotionally, financially-- when you really needed it, when that person had no legal or professional obligation to help? For that matter, have you ever been the stranger offering the such aid?

If so, tell us your story.

Before I offer mine, let me define total stranger as someone whose name you did not know, nor the reverse, at the beginnng of the encounter in question; likewise, you should never even have talked to them. Best of all would be if you’d never laid eyes on them before, but that third attribute is not strictly necessary.


And here’s my story.

As some of you may know, my mother died a week ago today. I didn’t get the message that she’d passed on until after her body had been taken out of her hospital room, and between trying to support my father, writing my tribute, preparing for the influx of relatives coming in town, and getting ready for the funeral, I did not get a chance to see her body alone until the visitation. I went to that a bit early hoping that I might have a moment alone with Mother’s body, but she was so beloved that about two dozen of her friends had the same thought; I tried again before the funeral, but the same thing happened.

So yesterday I drove out to the cemetery to say goodbye in private. The trip wasn’t planned; I happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to go on impulse. I got there just shy of sunset, and with a little help from a map provided by two office workers went off to find the grave. They offered to go with me, but I said I’d rather go by myself. As I walked, I struggled for words to say to her as my final goodbye; though I’d written a letter to her and placed it in her casket (per Nutty Bunny’s suggestion), that hadn’t quite done it.

The map wasn’t helpful as helpful as one might have wished; I could find the general section, but the specific plot was harder, though the earth should still have been visibly untilled. Being miserable, confused, I was oblivious to my surroundings. Consequently I was a little startled when a voice asked me who I was visiting. Turning, I saw a man a little older than I, looking at me gently. When I told him I was visiting my mother’s grave, he said that he’d just finished doing the same thing when he saw me walking past, obviously looking for something. I showed him the map, and he looked it over, figured out where we were, and led me there. He had, he said, noticed the untilled earth here when cleaning off his own father’s headstone, and when he saw me searching had thought this was what I looked for. While we walked he told me about his long estrangement from his father, which, he said, had not been resolved prior to his father’s death. But, he went on, though he regretted that, he had learned to let go. He had never had occasion to doubt his father’s love for him, and he knew his father would not wish him to feel remorseful or guilty forever. He told me that he knew I was forlorn at that moment, but that I didn’t have to fear that I would always be so. And, just before we got to my mother’s grave – very near his father’s, as I said – he showed me how the vase that comes with the grave markers worked, so that, when Mother’s marker finally gets put in, I won’t have any difficulty putting flowers there. With that he walked away so I could have a little time with my mother, and when I was done he pointed out two trees near the grave that I could always use as a landmark to find my way back, and then walked back with me to my car.

In short, he was an angel.

Anyone else have a tale of kindness to tell?

That’s very touching, Skald the Rhymer.

I was in Ireland a few years ago, traveling on my own for the first time in my life (I was 20 at the time). It was a wonderful experience but the first few weeks were overwhelming and sometimes scary. Anyway, after spending a day in Clifton my plan was to catch a bus to Galway and then catch another bus to Doolin. It was off-season, so buses were infrequent - there were only two buses from Galway to Doolin and they were 4 hours apart.

The bus from Clifton to Galway ended up arriving late. I asked the bus driver if we would arrive in Galway in time for me to catch the first bus to Doolin, and he told me probably not. The thought of killing 4 hours with a huge suitcase to drag around and nothing in particular to do was very depressing. But when we got to Galway, the bus driver stopped somewhere in the middle of town and told me that he’d called the Doolin bus driver and that the bus was waiting just around the corner. I was the ONLY person making such a transfer, so basically an entire bus was on hold for some random Asian girl traveling around Europe all by her lonesome. I was so touched and relieved I almost cried.

I love the Irish. :slight_smile:

Not mine but Mr. S’s, but it touched me too.

Our dearly beloved dog Emily died suddenly and unexpectedly one year about a week before Christmas. She was more his dog than mine, and he was devastated. As if that weren’t bad enough, we had some distressing problems with the ASSHOLES at the pet crematory that upset us even more, which we hadn’t thought possible. Meanwhile we had been planning a big New Year’s Eve party that we couldn’t really back out of, even though we weren’t really in the mood anymore, and of course we both also started to get sick. That was probably the lowest time in our life together. (Yes, I know we’ve been lucky. But it still sucked.)

But he continued dragging himself to work that week, pretty much just trying to lie low and get through the day. Most mornings he was in the habit of stopping at Hardee’s for a coffee and snack on the way to work, which he did one of the mornings of that awful week. When he got out his wallet to pay, the counter person told him to put his money away: the manager was buying breakfast for all the regulars that morning.

Mr. S is usually a pretty self-contained guy, but he says that little gesture put him in tears there at the counter. Here the world had been shitting on him, and it totally touched him to have somebody do a small nice thing for him for a change. For two bucks it made his day.

He came home that night and told me about it, and I called the store and spoke to the manager to thank him (he said we were the only ones to do so) and to tell him why it meant so much. He said he’d recently been divorced, and he understood the power of the little things.

Many people did kind things when my first husband was sick, and again after he died. People we didn’t even know all that well. A co-worker came over on a Saturday after an ice storm and cleared big downed tree limbs from our yard. (Came and left without me noticing – one of the neighbors told me who’d done it.) A neighbor surreptitiously disposed of bags of leaves that I’d raked up and left in the yard.

After he died, old friends came to get me every Thursday for a girls’ nights out. His sister and her husband drove 50 miles in a snowstorm to take me to dinner.

I’m not doing real well at random acts myself, but when I can afford it, I go to Amazon and find wish lists posted by people stationed overseas, and send them something from their list. (You can search by APO or AE, using any last name.)

Skald, I was very touched by your story, too.

Here’s my story about being an angel :dubious: , which I shared in another thread some time ago.

It was MLK Day in 1999, and I was driving home from work later than usual on a bitterly cold night. I stopped at the gas station that was on the border between semi-suburbia and empty farmland. As I filled up, I noticed a young adult (25-30 maybe) African-American male with a gas can in his hand, tapping on the windows of other cars at the pumps and asking for a ride to his car.

I had recently been lectured severely by someone at work about the dangers of offering kindness to strangers, so I made up my mind that, if he tapped on my window, I would say to him firmly, “I’m sorry. It’s my policy to not give rides to people I don’t know.”

I finished filling my tank before he made his way to the pump island where my car was and pulled up to the driveway back to the highway with a sigh of relief, thinking I’d dodged a bullet. Then it came – the tap at the window. It was him. I rolled down my window and he said very politely, “Excuse me, ma’am. Would you be willing to give me a ride to my car? It’s just a few miles down the road. I ran out of gas.”

And I said, firmly, “Sure. Hop in.” When push came to shove, I couldn’t leave this poor guy literally out in the cold. He’d already walked the couple of miles to the station.

We chit-chatted about banalities like the weather for the few minutes it took to get him to his car. I let him off. He thanked me profusely. There was a state police outpost on my way home, just another mile or so past his car, so I stopped there and said, “There’s a car stranded a mile or so west. You might want to go check on him.”

I felt really crappy that I, the bleeding-heart liberal, had very nearly made a decision grounded firmly in racial prejudice. (I assure you that if it had been a well-dressed middle-aged white person knocking on windows, I would not have hesitated. Hell, I would have probably approached him/her and offered to help.)

I just hope that when my turn comes and I’m in need of the kindness of strangers, I don’t encounter someone like the me I nearly was that night.

Back about 3 years before Mrs. D and I were married, we were on our way back to my house after a date. We were on the interstate and it was raining really hard when we drove past a car that was pulled of the side of the road. As we passed it, I saw that the lady was still in the car on the passenger side and up ahead was a guy with a newspaper walking away from the car toward the next exit (which was about 1 mile away). He was getting wet really fast.

We pulled over, picked up the guy, then backed up and picked up his wife. Sure enough they were having car problems and he was trying to get to a phone. We drove them to the nearest gas station. They were so thankful. The guy gave me his card and told me to contact him sometime and he would buy us dinner.

I lost the card the next day. We were just happy to help.

On the day of my first job interview (and the only one that I had been able to line up), I had stayed over at my then-boyfriend’s house. It was an old house, with locks on the doors that required keys on both sides. The last roommate out didn’t realize that I was in the house and locked the door. There was a rainstorm going on, and I had to climb out a window to get out and walk to the subway for my 50 minute ride home.

The storm got worse while I was on the train. I needed nylons for the interview, and stopped in half a dozen stores without finding any. Finally, I went into a CVS, dripping water and thoroughly miserable. On the way in, a security guard made a little comment about the weather.

There were umbrellas on an endcap, and I picked one up. I found the nylons, and counted up my money to see I was a dollar short, so I went and put back the umbrella. The same security guard saw what I had done, came up to me and asked why I wasn’t buying it. I told him I was a little bit short, and he gave me the dollar I needed to get the umbrella. It touched me so much that a stranger would offer to help when I never would have dreamed of asking for money - it reset my whole outlook for quite some time.

Thanks for the story, Skald.

When I was 18, I was working minimum wage as a security guard. Most of my work was just locking down pool areas at condo communities, but I had one gig at row of model homes that had just been built. I dealt for about two weeks with sunburn, getting harassed by the construction workers, and upper-middle-class dumbasses with overblown senses of superiority asking inane requests of me. In short, I was generally not happy.

I took the bus one day to the models and plopped down for my 8 hour shift. Then the rain started. I was dumb and didn’t bring an umbrella, models were closed, and all the trees being newly planted offered no shelter at all. I stood there in the rain.

SUV comes up. I figure it’s the next batch of yuppies asking me when the models would open (and I was right). I give them the info and send them along their way. About five minutes later, the same SUV pulls in. The lady opens her window to give me an umbrella and a huge cup of Godiva hot chocolate (I knew exactly what it was because the cup proclaimed the name of my usual coffee joint). I told the lady quite honestly that she just renewed my faith in humanity.

It makes me happy that people do things like this, and I try to return the favor once in a while.

A few years ago, I was out with my parents when my mother suddenly collapsed in a parking lot (she ended up being fine after a few days in the hospital). A lady came over to us and offered to use her cell phone to call an ambulance. In the chaos of the situation, we didn’t notice that my sister (who was about ten) was crying and upset. Another random lady hugged her and comforted her, telling her everything would be okay. All together, about six or seven strangers stopped to see if there was anything they could do to help.

A couple winters ago I slipped on some ice on a sidewalk that was on a slope (there had been some freezing rain earlier and there was lots of ice). I slid on the ice and broke my ankle, then fell over and was sitting in the snow beside a four lane road. I was only about half a block from home but I didn’t know if I could stand, let alone hop home on the ice. Luckily, I didn’t have to try.

Within less than 10 or 15 seconds, the first three cars who drove by stopped to help (one of them even doing a (illegal) U-turn from the other side of the road). I didn’t need an ambulance, but they all offered me their cell phones to call home and two of them offered me a ride to the hospital if I needed it (but I didn’t, as my parents were home). I also used their cell to call my job and let them know I’d be missing work (I’d been on my way to catch the bus to work) and they stayed with me until my parents got there to pick me up.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had stopped to help me, but I was grateful that so many strangers jumped to help me so quickly.

Not quite as dramtic as some of the other stories, but it got me out of a spot.

Some decades ago I was travelling through Canada and stopped at a rest area for a pee-break. I get back to the car and there are the keys still dangling in the ignition, the doors are locked . . . and it’s Dominion Day. Another motorist spotted my plight, fished around in his trunk and came up with a wire coathanger. This was back in the day when doorlocks still had heads on them so with a few minutes of fishing around, the lock was popped and I was on my way. When we were fiddling, the guy mentioned that he had locked his keys a few years before, been rescued by a stranger with a coathanger, and had been carrying one ever since.

I put one in my car and used it a couple years later for someone in identical straits, and passed the story on.

I had a gentleman stop when my car was broken down along the highway in Chicago (turns out it needed a new radiator) and insist on refilling the radiator for me, which gave me enough driving time to get home.

I tried to help someone - I was driving through Wisconsin south on I-94, and the rain was pouring down. It was right at the “I really should pull over” level, and I was thinking about that when I saw a compact car start hydroplaning and then zip sideways off the road and smack into a fence. I managed to safely pull over a little ways down the highway, grab my umbrella, and run back towards the car (I figured that was safer than trying to back down the shoulder, possibly running into anyone else who might want to pull over right there). However, by the time I got there the car was empty, and I saw the driver through the rain, quickly heading up the fortunately nearby offramp, too far away for me to catch up to.

I’d have to say first prize goes to the air-conditioning repairman who stopped my ex-husband from literally choking the life out of me that one time.

Second prize to everyone who ever stopped to help me with car trouble. Anytime I ever had to pull off the road, someone would stop within minutes.

Third prize to the lady who called me at work one day, asking if we were the lab on Tower Road. I told her we weren’t and mentioned that we got a lot of calls for that lab, but I couldn’t help her find it because no one knew the place by name. She called me back a few minutes later and told me she’d found out what the correct number was, and she gave it to me so I could help wrong-number callers in the future. I do use it, and think of her every time.

My story is not as touching as these, but here it is anyway:

A stranger on an elevator once gave me her earrings.

I was on the elevator with a friend and, being the social doof that I am, mentioned to my friend that another woman on the elevator was wearing earrings just like ones I’d lost (and missed since) years ago. Somehow I thought the woman herself, and with whom I shared a space roughly 6’ x 6’, did NOT hear my comments to my friend, but lo and behold, as she stepped off the elevator, she turned and, smiling, placed the earrings in my hand.

All I could do was mutter a bumbling, “Thanks!” as the door closed behind her.

A few years back I spent around two weeks hiking a section of the Appalchian Trail from New Jersey to Connecticut. One evening I stopped at a shelter in the middle of Harriman State Park in New York; four hikers were already there, sitting around talking. I thought it was odd that they were all drinking beer, as long-distance hikers don’t bother with coolers and unnecessary weight, and I knew there was no town nearby.

It turned out that one fo the 4 had hiked in from a side trail with the beer and sodas in a cooler, as well as sandwiches and fruit, just for the purpose of feeding through-hikers. An hour or so before sundown he took the empties and hiked back out. He said he did that one or twice a year when he knew that the long-distance hikers from Georgia were coming through.

The next day in another part of the park I came across a styrofoam cooler bungeed to a tree. It was full of ice and cold Gatorades and iced teas. Someone had written across the top in pen a request that the last person to take a drink take the empty cooler down the trail to a trash can around 100 yards away. Sure enough, 100 yards down was a trash can where the trail crossed a road through the park. So these people were doing 30 or 40 people a kindness without ever even meeting them. Absolutely amazing.

I have several, some minor and some major, and one of my own.

  1. Car Tire.
    I came out one day this summer to find my right front car tire completely flat. Strange, I had driven it earlier that day and it was fine. Must have been a pointy rock or something. So I called the SO, and he said he was on his way. Meanwhile, I knew generally how to change the tire. Got out the owner’s manual - great thing, don’t you know? Got out the jack, the windy-thing to loosen the nuts, the spare, and rolled up my sleeves.
    But as I read the book I realized there was one thing I didn’t know - where to put the jack. I’d forgotten about that metal strip under the car. So I waited instead.
    No less than four people offered me their cell phone to call, or a ride home. The fifth person, a very handsome well-dressed young man, insisted on replacing the tire. I kept telling him that he would get filthy but he didn’t care and got right down on his hands and knees to do it for me. He had it replaced in three minutes and of course wouldn’t take any money and walked off, whistling. When the SO showed up, I was sitting there with the spare on, looking pleased as punch. That man was the nicest guy.

  2. 75 cents.
    I used to commute about 30 miles to my college, having to cross a toll bridge on the way. One day my wallet got stolen and I had literally no money on me, not even a cent. I needed 75 cents to get across the bridge. I went into a grocery store and asked a nice elderly woman if she would loan/give me the 75 cents, explaining what happened. I still remember her look when she said, “You’re not going to use it on drugs, are you?” :smiley: A minor thing, but has forever touched my heart. She thinks it was just 75 cents to cross the bridge, but to me it was not having to tell my parents my wallet was stolen - which by the way, was recovered, sans the few dollars that were in it but containing everything else important. If I had had to tell my parents, I would have received a lecture and then the cold & silent treatment for days.

  3. Hitchhiker - my own.
    I have been told since I was a kid never to pick up hitchhikers, and never have except for once. I was driving within Albany when I saw a harried-looking woman desperately trying to flag cars down. I pulled over and let her in, and she said her father had just been taken to hospital and she had no car. She could call a cab, she said, but she didn’t have much money and had been trying to take the bus but decided to start walking. I drove her to the hospital and dropped her off right by the emergency room. I asked her if she wanted me to wait, but she said I should continue, she’d be all right.

4.** Indian Security guard.**
I was 15 years old and was stranded in Indira Ghandi airport after my plane had* turned around in mid-flight* due to lack of structural integrity or some such thing. PanAm, right before it went Chapter 11. I didn’t know enough about traveling to know the airline would pay for my hotel bill, so I ended up staying behind at the airport, thinking I had no money to pay for it.
I had money but no rupee coins to fit in the phone box to call my uncle. The airport emptied out until it seemed like I was the only one there, along with the blue-collar workers who I had been specifically told not to talk to, since supposedly they liked to be disrespectful to young girls (disrespectful means touching, etc.).
I grew more and more confused and frustrated. I asked a young lady at a desk with a money box in it if I could have a rupee coin to call my uncle. She refused, saying it was policy. Not know what else to do, I finally sat down - several feet away from her - and cried.
A security guard must have noticed me, for he came over and asked me what was wrong. Thankfully I was fluent in Hindi! I told him, between my silly sobs, what was going on. He marched over to the woman at the desk and scolded her, saying here was a girl from our own country, albeit living abroad, who was scared and frightened and only needed a coin. He admonished her to open her desk and came back with two shiny rupee coins. He then escorted me to a pay phone and waited while I called my uncle and then waited with me until Uncle came to pick me up.
I’ll never forget the way he got me those coins, nor how kindly he waited for me. I never learned his name, nor do I even think I thanked him properly - I was way too afraid and naive. I hope he knows what a good man he is.

I posted this already, but I think this bears repeating.

I’m a waitress at what was my mother’s restaurant, and I was being worn down from working there so long. I get some cool customers, but lately I had been encountering mostly mean and rude people who demanded a lot and didn’t tip well or at all.

Then one night while I was busy, a guy came in and ordered to go. He was polite and patient despite him having to wait a bit for me to take his order and for his food to be prepared. When he paid, he handed me another crisp $20 bill and told me that was my tip and to have a good night. I tried to give it back but he just walked away smiling. My saying thank you didn’t convey how much his generosity meant to me.

I will always remember him and his random act of kindness.

I’ve also been the pleased recipient of the drive-by tire change. Also, being in Chicago, of the helping hand snow shovel to dig my car out. I’ve also been the one to head out with my shovel to help dig my neighbors out - it’s my workout for the day, and I have no office job to get to, so why not?

One time my car broke down about 45 minutes from home, and this bizarre old woman offered my friend and I a ride back home. She was totally insane, a chain smoker who drove one of those old '70s battleships of a car and had a fluffy white dog in her purse who growled at the two of us in the backseat the whole way home. She lectured us (I don’t even remember what the topic was) in this gravely whiskey voice the whole way, gesticulating wildly and looking at us in the rear view mirror, unaware of the traffic around here. Still, we were grateful to be spared the $75 cab fare we didn’t have!

Then there was the time my baby was born 17 weeks early and a bunch of angels on a message board gave me advice and comfort and prayers and preemie clothes…thanks, you guys.

When I was first starting out on my own, I was sitting in a car at a gas station with one of my room mates. We were counting out our change to see how much gas we could get. An old man walked up and tapped on my window.

“How much are you short?” he asked.

“We’re not short, sir,” I replied. “We’re just seeing how much we can buy.”

“Take this,” he ordered, passing me a five dollar bill. At the time, you could buy five gallons for that. I was astounded at this random act of kindness. It wasn’t much, but I’ve never forgotten it. He reached out to help a pair of strangers for no good reason. I pass that kindness on to others whenever I get the chance.


My mother and stepfather were in a motorcycle accident. Shortly afterward, mail started arriving from all over the country-- “get well” cards with money inside from complete strangers. Each held only a little bit-- five dollars here, two dollars there-- but by the time it finished coming, there was more than enough to pay their medical bills.

Mom told me that she was part of a loosely-organized network which shared the addresses of people who had been injured in bike accidents through word of mouth. Mom said she had always participated when she’d heard of someone being injured, but she had never dreamed there were so many people involved, nor that the money could add up so much.


My favorite act of random kindness was done by Oprah Winfrey. You’ve never heard this story because it wasn’t publicized, not even in our local paper.

The father of one of my friends in school had a rare form of cancer. He’d been battling it for years and losing. Doctors gave him very little hope of survival. One of them mentioned an experimental treatment in Boston, but the expense was so great that there was no chance that my friend’s dad would be able to try it.

Someone from his church wrote a letter to Oprah, who responded with a check. She paid not only for the treatment, but to rent rooms for the family to stay with him while he was recieving it. He’s still alive today, thanks to her.

She never publicized this incredible act of kindness. No one knows about it but a handful of people (and now, you guys, of course.) I’ve since wondered how many of these wonderful things she does that no one knows about.

My wife’s car ran out of gas (went from 1/2 full to E in seconds…surprise!) literally 100 feet from a gas station, in one of two left turn lanes on a steep incline at a busy intersection. Definitely not the type of place you want to suddenly hold up traffic but I hardly had much choice when it happened. She was panicking and that made me start to panic as well. I put the e-brake on, locked the doors, ran over to the gas station and explained the situation but they said, sorry, we don’t have a gas can, you’re out of luck. Ran down 100 yards to a second station and got the same response. Frustrated, I ran back to the car and we tried calling AAA but they said it would take an hour just to get there. Meanwhile most people glared, honked, gave the finger, etc, as they slowly went by our jam up which just added to the whole ugly situation.

It was then that a teenage guy pulled over, ran over to us through the traffic mess and calmly directed traffic around the area so I could coast backwards down the opposite side of the street to the curb. Two more guys stopped and offered to go get gas for us. It was like an ice cold water fountain at the end of a long desert trek. I thanked them all profusely for helping us out but of course they all said, no problem, just being friendly. I found out the first guy who stopped was trying to start up a local foundation to help kids with no fathers so I told him I’d put him in touch with the community affairs dept of the radio station where I work. They were more than willing to help him out with information or even some airtime on the local affairs show but unfortunately his cell phone # stopped working after their initial phone chat with him. I tried the best I could to get a hold of him after that but had no luck. I felt really bad because he seemed completely dedicated to getting the foundation started up.

For my part, in college I did something really stupid (according to my girlfriend at the time) when I was driving from one tiny town in Texas to another around 2 or 3 in the morning. At a gas station, a homeless man with no legs was scooting around on this 4-wheeled cart and asked me for a ride to a city that happened to be in the direction I was heading. I said sure and he hopped in the front, put the cart on the floor, and we headed off. I talked a bit with him and he seemed genuinely nice but looking back it probably wasn’t the safest thing to do at the time.