A Rochester man left home for a few days and when he returned, he found a 12-year-old girl sleeping in his backyard.
At first, John Goodman thought a homeless person was camping out in his backyard.
“I’m like ‘My man get up,’” said Goodman, according to WHEC. “She was like knocked out asleep. She was just lying there.”
But Goodman saw that she was just a little girl, he was shocked.
“She came up out of her sweater and peeked her head out and I saw her hair and I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s a little girl,” Goodman told WHEC.
The girl had ran away from school after an incident, and didn’t return home because her feet had cuts and she didn’t have her shoes.
Goodman took her in, gave her food, and found some shoes for her.
Goodman’s friend told him that there was a missing girl alert, and gave him a number so he could call the girl’s grandparents.
“They went and they got her like he said,” the girl’s grandfather Dunstan Luke told WHEC. “And I’m still trying to come up with a way to show this man my gratitude.”
Luke said that the family had searched for hours to no avail, and that the entire family was grateful to Goodman.
“Just the relief and the joy that we feel right now,” Luke said. “I’m having a hard time—her sisters and them, they just sat down and cried.”
