In Alabama, a UPS employee walked to and from work every day. His name is Derrick Taylor. He is nineteen years old. He works to support his sick mother.

After a year, his co-workers realized how much this hard-working young man was doing for his mom. They secretly pulled together some money and bought him a used car, so that he didn’t have to tread those 10 miles day in, day out anymore.

In India, Minu Pauline owns a restaurant. Many months ago, she noticed that homeless people were scavenging through her garbage bins for food that she had thrown away. An idea came to her. She installed a huge refrigerator outside her restaurant, where unfinished food by customers would be stored. Patrons could also put their leftover there themselves. Anybody who needed food could go to the fridge, take as much as they needed with no questions asked.

I recently had a conversation with a close friend. She is an old lady in her early eighties. She told me that one time she gave $50 to a young woman on the street because she needed bus money to go home which was out-of-state. My friend felt quite good about it and she told her daughter and son-in-law later of what she did. They were mad at her and told her she was stupid in being conned like that.

I thanked her for sharing her story with me and I thanked her for helping that young woman.

My take was this. If that young woman really needed bus fare to go home, then my senior friend truly helped a person in need. If the young woman was a fraud preying on older folks, my elderly friend, who is quite comfortable financially, had lost nothing of much value to her. That’s a chance I would take too, I told her.

What have we done for our neighbors lately?

*** The End ***

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