Layers of kindness bring mobility to people around the world
Sep 27, 2017, 7:06 AM
The thing about writing up stories about kindness is I’ve found kindness comes in layers. It’s never just one act. Kindness is inspiring and once you feel it yourself or watch it in action you feel compelled to pass it on.
That’s certainly true about the story I spotted out of Meridian, Idaho from KBOI TV. Nathan Ogden was invited to a Boise State game by a friend who had “the nice seats.” However, because Nathan is in a wheelchair he had to be helped out of it and into those nice seats. By halftime, he explained in a YouTube video, the wheelchair was gone.
“Even if it was only for a moment until they were able to find something for me to sit in – I felt that again. That ‘dang, I can’t move, I’m frozen, I’m stuck’ and I don’t want anyone to live that way,” Nathan said.
Stadium staff helped him organize a massive search party. They scoured the stadium property and surrounding streets for two days before Nathan decided his $4,500 custom wheelchair was gone forever. He decided to try GoFundMe to raise the money for a new wheelchair.
It began as many of these crowdfunding efforts do with $5 here and $20 there. Then, out of the blue, a man by the name of Ryan DeLuca injected the campaign with $20,000.
Ryan, a local business owner, says he had watched Nathan’s story play out as the search parties were formed, got to work, and came up empty-handed. He researched Nathan, too, and learned that the man who was just robbed of his mobility had just spent months raising more than $40,000 to send wheelchairs to people living in impoverished countries through the organization Chair the Hope.
“You feel for him in such a deep way and then to see him take that tragedy and turn it into something that has benefited so many people around the world … it’s hard not to be inspired by that,” Ryan said.
Because $20,000 dollars is more than Nathan needs for his own wheelchair the rest will go, of course, to send more wheelchairs to people around the world.
