Mom of Four Thanks ‘Angel’ Stranger Who Helped Her After Truck Broke Down

Tawny Nelson, a Florida mother of four, thanked a man who helped her and her children during a rainstorm after her truck had broken down.

Related Coverage

Woman Sees Note on Car, Decides to Donate Kidney to Stranger

The 29-year-old single mother said her truck’s battery had died, but an elderly man with “a cane and a bad limp” came to her rescue, reported television anchor Frank Somerville and the Daily Mail. Her alternator belt was damaged and the tire was punctured.

“The other day we desperately need to go to the store. So we loaded up and drove to the Winn Dixie about 9 blocks away,” Nelson was quoted by Somerville as saying. When she emerged, it was “pouring rain,” she added.

“I loaded my kids and groceries into the truck. Tried to crank it… Nothing. No click. Nothing,” she told the reporter before adding that one of her children accidentally left the truck light on.

“My battery was dead. My phone was also disconnected. I have no family to speak of and was on my own,” Nelson continued.

However, she asked several people in the store to help but they ignored her, she claimed.

Those people in the Winn Dixie, she claimed, “acted like I didn’t exist.”

When she went to her car, Nelson said an elderly man knocked on her window and helped her.

“I opened the door. He handed me a plate of chicken strips and biscuits from the deli and bottles of water,” Somerville quoted her as saying.

He told her: “Feed those babies and your self young lady. I have a tow truck on the way and my wife will be here shortly to take y’all home.”

Nelson said the elderly man came to her home the next day with a mechanic who replaced her alternator and battery, the Mail reported.

“The elderly gentleman then left and did not return. When I asked what I owed the mechanic and if I could make payments he smiled telling me the older man had paid for all of it,” she said.

“What he did revived my faith when I was falling apart.”

She asked him if he would accept any money, but he refused.

“He said that the only payment the older man wanted was for me to never give up and keep being an amazing mum,” Tawny wrote. “I’ve never cried so hard in my life. Things had been absolutely awful, more so than I care to explain, and without knowing us or our situation this kind man helped us in ways he will never know.”

Nelson said she hopes her story will help other people be inspired to help each other.

She added,  “I’ll never be able to thank him. But I certainly hope one day I can do what he did for me for someone else.”