Something nice that a person you never met did for you...Tell us, please

[SoCalDem]

The kitty on the car roof reminded me of something that happened to my son.

He was getting gas in Corona, and like an idiot, put his wallet on the roof of the car. He was headed to northern California, and of course did not even miss the wallet until he stopped for gas the next time. Luckily, his finacee' had some money, so they made it home. What he did not know was that WE got a phone call from a guy who lived in Idaho. He and his wife were in their camper, headed hoome after vacation, and saw the wallet fly off the car. They stopped, and found OUR number in my son's wallet, so they called us. All of his important stuff was in that thing..credit cards, business contact cards, notes for work, and about $500 in cash. (It was one of those dayrunner type things)..

They wanted to make sure that the address inside his wallet was correct so they could send it to him, or if it was on their way home, they could drop it off to his home (it wasn't).

Long story short, we called our son the next day and told him.. He had written the whole thing off as lost forever. A day later he got it by special delivery from the post office..not one cent missing.

There was also a note from the couple explaining how they found it and that they did not want a reward.

He did send them a gist certificate for dinner out in a nice chain restaurant in the town they lived in.... and a Thank you note..

Not everyone is out to screw people :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. We were in line to go to a theme park last summer and

the family ahead of us had too many free passes so they gave us the extra one.

Cool thing was it was the exact same amount of money that we'd paid for a tent site we got thunderstormed out of the night before, so we broke even on that one. :)

[sniffa]

2. bought me a computer

and shipped it to my house.

sending me an autographed cindy aLexander cd.

sending me a bag of ketchup fLavored doritos.

sent me wonderfuL pictures.

[ProudToBeLiberal]

36. how did the complete stranger know your address o_O

pretty cool what the stranger did though

[KittyWampus]

3. Came Out Of Borders Books To My Car & A Man Came Up To Me

before I even spotted where my car was parked and said "you left your lights on, I'll give you a jump".

Sure enough, I spotted my car and the lights WERE on, and I'd been in the store for about 1/2 hour. The battery WAS dead.

So I asked how he even knew it was MY car, and he said he was sitting in his car in the lot waiting for his wife and kid and noticed me pulling in etc etc.

So I got a jump immediately and drove away- happy ending!

Offered to buy the guy a coffee or his family some Krispy Kremes... but he said no thanks.

He was probably just happy to help someone out and to have something to do while waiting for his family :D

[Blue-Jay]

4. A guy replaced my brake light while we were in a drive-thru.

We were waiting for some Taco Bell at a ridiculously late hour, and he approached my car to tell me that my light was out. I thanked him and said that I'd stop at the store and get a replacement. He went back to his car and grabbed one that he had, came back to my car and told me to pop the trunk. Then he snapped the new light in, presto!

It was nice but kind of surreal.

[peekaloo]

5. changed a tire on my car

Many years ago in Tampa, Fl. off a very busy stretch of I-4. I had left the trunk unlocked and walked to a gas station to make a call and when I returned the spare was on. Left no note. My family didn't believe my story.

Bless that person(s).

[ET Awful]

9. LOL . . . I like that one :)

When it's totally anonymous is when things like that are best :).

[LynzM]

6. I lost my wallet while I was living in Germany...

Figured it was totally gone, as I didn't think I had my address at the time written in it, or my cell number. The number I did have was for an ex-boyfriend's aunt (complicated, yes) who lived in another town. The guy who found it called her, she emailed me, I called the guy, and we met up so I could get my wallet back. It was so cool to know not everyone is out to be mean!

[CanuckAmok]

7. A DUer bought my star this year.

And once I lost my cell phone. When I checked the voice mail a day later, someone had left this message: "Hi, I found your phone. You can pick it up at the Stanley Park Aquarium. I'm going to turn it off now, so your battery won't run down. Bye."

[ET Awful]

8. I can't recall anyone doing stuff like that for me, though I've done it

for others a few times.

The one I remember most was at a rest-stop between Bakersfield and Visalia, California. I pull in to go to the restroom, and there was a guy there with his hood up and steam pouring out of the engine compartment. He had somehow developed a huge crack in his radiator hose. We both stood their pondering for a minute, then I went and dug around in my trunk . . . I came back with a roll of duct tape, a neoprene wetsuit patch, and some rubber gasket sealant :). We used a piece of neoprene over the crack, used some sealant to hold it in place, then duct-taped over the whole works until he could get to a garage the next day :).

I got a thank you note from him a month later with a wetsuit repair kit :).

[Lavender Brown]

10. That's really going out of the way

:loveya: I don't know anything about cars, so I'm lucky I live in the city and don't have to worry about it. It's going to be tough when I leave and have to start driving my old hunk of junk again. :scared:

[ET Awful]

13. I don't know much about cars really :)

Neither did he. We just both looked at a rubber hose, and tried to come up with whatever we could to patch rubber :).

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. Me, at the grandstands, watching a Champ Car race

Sun was murderous. My arms started to burn, so I covered them with race pamphlets.

A complete stranger offered me his sunscreen. :thumbsup:

[amazona]

12. This is a story from my gambling days

A security specialist who I never met -- and I still haven't met him, last I heard he had moved to South America -- sent me a bunch of information and flyers that was being sent around by a detective agency about me. Some of the (mis)information was pretty funny, and it was useful to see who they thought I was working with and what my story was. He knew I wasn't doing anything wrong or illegal, and I always felt it was a nice gesture to inform someone, especially considering he could have gotten in trouble on the job if his employer ever found out. He tipped me several times when there was an alert about my movements.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[JI7]

14. i forgot to put the lid back on after getting gas in the car

i had put the lid on the car and was driving out of the gas station waiting to make a turn. the guy in the car behind saw it and tapped my car to let me know and put it back on.

some years back i was somewhere and needed to call my parents to tell them to pick me up but i didn't have any money and the first lady i asked for some change for gave it to me.

[steve2470]

15. a lady saw I had a flat tire and bought Fix-a-Flat for me

I was totally astonished, "didn't know her from Adam's housecat"

:yourock:

[Patiod]

16. Lots, actually

Twice guys stopped and helped me with a jump or a flat. And they couldn't see me when they stopped, either, because it was pouring rain - I'm sure they couldn't tell who was stuck (both were in "bad" neighborhoods and the guys were locals - just goes to show you something about the % of folks in "bad" neighborhoods who aren't so bad...)

Once I came out of a mall to find my rear headlights bashed up, and a note on the windshield saying "I saw who did this. Licence plate XXXX. If you need a witness, my number is XXX-XXXX". Cops called the number of the people the car was registered to: "my son? no, he didn't have any accidents. Was he at the mall? Yes....hold on a minute.......well, it looks like he'll be mowing a lot of lawns this summer." Sent the note-leaver one of those big tins of popcorn-by-mail.

[Glenda]

17. Someone online gave me a referral for ING direct

I got $25 for opening an account - she got $10 for referring me.

I know she got something out of it, but I will always think of her kindly, esp when i see her posts

[sniffa]

18. i thought it was gonna be

an offer of free money from a nigerian prince. :P

how you doing? :D

[Glenda]

19. lol! You know, my spam-guards are set up too restrictive lately.

I'm surprised that even your post got through to me!

:evilgrin:

j/k, I'm fine. What's up with your bad self?

[sniffa]

20. counting the minutes down

untiL the weekend. not many pLans, but i pLan to be rowdy. :P

[Glenda]

23. see, that's where we differ...

I plan to be a perfect angel O8)

[sniffa]

24. onLy because

you're not hanging out with me this weekend. :evilgrin:

[ffm172]

21. my mom, her boyfriend and I were hiking

in Italy. First, we lost all the postcards we wrote (already stamped)and someone picked them up and threw them in the mailbox. Second during the end of the hike my moms boyfriend got problems with his knees (it went downhill almost the whole time). A other German couple gave him a pair of hiking canes, so that he can support his weight while climbing down and they kept walking (faster than we did). My mom asked where they stayed. We finally made it all the way down to the station some hours later. On our way back to our hotel we took the canes back to the couple with a bottle of wine as thank you.

[Tafiti]

22. Around Christmas time this past year...

...my grandmother sent me a card in the mail with "Christmas money" in it. I had it in my car for a couple days, and then one day went to the car wash. I was taking everything out to vacuum inside, and when I was done left the card sitting on the ledge of the vacuum island. I didn't notice for a day or two, and had no idea where it could've been. I thought of the car wash, but thought, if anything, I accidentally threw it away. A couple days later, I got the card back in the mail (it was still in the envelope, which of course had my address on it), with a little note that said, "Found this at the car wash. Merry Christmas."

[Dookus]

25. A few years ago

I had to go to Australia on business. After a LOOOOOOONG flight to Sidney, I had to rent a car and drive down to Wollongong, about an hour south.

I'd never driven on the left-hand side of the street before. It was odd. The hard part wasn't the driving so much as the fact that everything in the car is reversed. If I tried to look in my rear view mirror, I found myself looking out the window. When I tried to use the turn signal, the windshield wipers came on. All very confusing, especially after such a long flight.

So down in Wollongong, I couldn't find my destination, so I stopped at a convenience store for directions. After getting some advice, I walked back out to the lot and saw a man behind my car, arms on the trunk, leaning into it. I was a bit surprised.

He saw me and said "Is this yer car? She decided to go on walkabout, mate!" Evidently I hadn't put it in Park and was on a slight hill. He very generously stopped it, and just stood there waiting for me to come out.

He saved me from having a rental car roll out onto a busy street. Nice people, the aussies.

[NV Whino]

41. Reminds me of a similar incident in Scotland

I was at the bus stop near the place I was staying outside Glasgow. I asked a gentleman at the stop which bus to take to get where I was going. He said, "Here, I'll show you." He got on the next bus with me, got me through the transfer and then transferred back to where he had started... in the opposite direction. Never knew his name. Never saw him again. Generous people, the Scots.

[aePrime]

26. Back when I was new at the whole university gig

I waited in line for several hours to register a class. I wasn't aware of how much credits cost, and when I finally got up to do my bit, it turned out I was about $25 short. The guy behind me just handed me the money.

[jswordy]

27. Phone rang late one night...I picked it up and heard a female voice say...

"Hi (my first name)...I heard you were good."

Then click. That was it. Very sexy breathy voice. No further calls or anything. That was years ago.

[uppityperson]

28. appointment book returned, letter mailed, new jack present

I have had people do many nice things for me over the yrs, mailing letters which I'd dropped, returning an appointment book I'd lost, one nice man helped me change a flat tire in the rain then dropped a new jack and cross shaped tire iron off at work for me the next day. I have returned wallets and done nice things for other people, it sure is nice to think about what they've done for me. Thank you for this topic as I was feeling way depressed about politics and the world and will now go on today ok. Which is another nice thing someone I never met (SoCalDem) has done for me!

[ImpeachBush]

29. An electric company employee ....

This electric company employee shoveled my parents' driveway back in January. This was about 5 weeks before my father passed away, and I was home for the weekend ... the weekend of the big ice storm in Logan County, Ohio. The power had been out for 3 days, already, and power crews and tree removal crews were crawling all over the town trying to get power restored. In the middle of this .. it snowed about 5 inches ... causing even more destruction and more downed trees beause of the added snow weight on top of iced-over objects. I was out shoveling the driveway, when a worker from a power truck walked past my driveway. I asked he if had any clue how much longer my parents would be without power, and explained that my father was bed-bound and my mother just turned 80, and how hard the storm had been on them, especially since the bed that hospice provided for my dad had an air-circulation mattress, which we couldn't use because there was no power, obviously. Here was my mom sleeping on an easy chair, my very-ill dad on the couch, and me on the floor in a sleeping bag because our little generator would power only one space heater and few other necessary things. The guy gave me shrug, and said he hoped by the next day (it was 3 more days, actually). Then he took the shovel from me and finished clearing the driveway. When he finished, I thanked him, and he said he felt really bad about my situation and wished there was more he could do ... asked if we needed food or anything. I was really touched by this act of kindness. It wasn't much, but at the time it meant a hell of a lot!

[jeanarrett]

31. I lived in the U.P. (Michigan) for 10 years and had to

go "down below" to the doctor in Petosky for prenatal appointments. 95 miles one way and I had three kids there in five years, so I crossed the Mackinac Bridge many times. One time a car of girl scouts and their leader were in front of me going home (up)at the toll booth and paid my fare and waved at me out the back window. So I paid the fare of the car behind me. I could see the guy behind me paying the fare of the guy behind him in my rearview mirror and wondered how far back it went. Over the years, I would periodically do it just for fun. Usually when there was a harried mom and dad and a load of kids going home from vacation. Goodbye from the U.P., hope you had a good time. It was fun. Random acts of kindness. Pass it on!

[Ann Arbor Dem]

38. I grew up in Petoskey!

And I've crossed that bridge too many times to count. Thanks for the idea...I'll do it next time I go north. (Most of my immediate family lives in the UP now.)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. I was on my way to Japan this past September, routed from

Minneapolis to Los Angeles on Northwest and then from Los Angeles to Tokyo on All Nippon Airways.

I scheduled my flight so that I would have four hours at LAX to change planes.

The night before, I received an automated phone call telling me that my flight was cancelled (I should have anticipated that when I saw the seating chart for the flight and noticed that it wasn't packed) and that I had been rebooked on the next flight. I panicked for a second, but realized that I would still have two hours.

However, when I got to the airport, I found that this flight was delayed for an hour or more. Panicking again, I called ANA's U.S. office on my cellphone and found that they had only one flight to Tokyo that day and that none of their Star Alliance partners left later than they did, so I would have to spend the night in L.A. if I missed that flight.

Well, we finally took off from MSP, and at the point one hour before the departure of my ANA flight, we were still circling LAX. I began to fret to my seatmates, and one of them, a young woman named Nicole said that she would run ahead to ANA's counter and explain why I was delayed while I retrieved my luggage from Northwest.

I didn't get my suitcase till twenty-five minutes before departure, but Nicole had already called my cellphone and assured me that ANA knew that I was coming. I didn't trust the shuttle buses, though, so I racewalked all the way to the international terminal.

With their Japanese sense of customer service, ANA was ready for me. I waved a "thank you" to Nicole and promised to send her a postcard from Japan as an ANA staffer escorted me through the employees' security checkpoint (no line) and through a series of back corridors to the gate that my flight was leaving from. The tail end of the boarding line was about five feet from the gate when I arrived.

Nicole had given me her business card with her cellphone number and work address, so I did indeed send her a postcard from Japan.

[SoCalDem]

32. kick for night owls

:)

[steve2470]

33. kick nt

[jus_the_facts]

34. several things since I joined DU....

.....DU'ers have donated in my name....a DU'er has sent me music and a poster in the mail....and the greatest thing a DU'er has done for me is helped me a bit financially to go see my Dad when he was in the hospital and I couldn't afford to go be with him....and I appreciate the opportunity to thank each and every one of you again for bein' so kind to me..and all the rest of you DU'ers who've been so supportive and caring and generous....I hope to be able to meet you all one o'these days. :loveya:

[Nikia]

35. People gave money for scholarships at my college

So I could attend. For my first year, I had to pay less than $2,000 out of pocket to attend a college with over $20,000/year tuition. I was accepted at 2 other private colleges that I had applied to. One, which also gave some need based scholarships, would have cost me $7,000 out of pocket, which we might have been able to somehow come up with if we got private loans and I joined ROTC to pay for the other years. The other college didn't offer any scholarships from the college at all (only federal aid) and I would have had to come up with $12,000, which probably would not have been possible.
I am greatful for them, who gave money, so others, who could not otherwise afford it, could go to my alma mater. I designate my gift to my college to go to scholarships as well.

[steve2470]

37. kick nt

[Blue Diadem]

39. I've had a few kind strangers do nice things

1st, years ago when a drunk driver hit me, a young couple chased him and got his license number. Without them, the man would have gone unpunished. He was driving on a suspended license, he received 6 months jail time.

2nd, when I spun around on the expressway and ended up facing the wrong way with cars and semi's hitting the same ice and sliding at me, a man saved me from possibly getting hit. He got out of his car, stood in the middle of that road and waved a snow shovel in the air to flag cars/trucks to stop. Only then was I able to turn my car around and go to the cop parked down a ways to file my report. Oh..the cop was nice too, he didn't cite me saying that I was the 30+ accident that morning and that they were going to close the road.

3rd, Hubby and I were traveling from our place in Michigan back to this house. We had gotten out at a rest stop to walk our dog and hadn't realized hubby had lost his wallet when he got out of the car. When we discovered it was missing, we immediately drove back. Thinking for sure it would be gone, my poor hubby was in a panic. We were pleasantly surprised to find a nice couple there who had found it and had given it to the rest stop maintenance man who had called the state police so it could be returned to us.

[NNadir]

40. When my son was having lots of surgeries, and the insurance was screwed up

a woman I had to call at an insurance company that was NOT responsible for the claim, took ownership of my problem and fixed it.

The situation was complex and I was only asking her to send a letter that said her company didn't cover us on the matter, but she made it possible to fix everything.

My wife had spent weeks on the phone trying to fix the bureaucratic problem, and had been left literally in tears about the whole matter - and that's leaving the stress of the surgeries themselves aside - and this woman's kindness helped us to clear the blockage.

I will always be grateful to her, though I have forgotten her name.

[Liberal_Andy]

42. rev Recluse heard my song on DU, and has been playing it on radioenigma

for about 6 months.

[xmas74]

43. Thank you Steve2470

Just thought that I would put that in.