Within days, a video of a heartwarming act of kindness in a McDonald’s parking lot in Fresno, California went viral, amassing nearly half a million views.
Last year, Daniel Richards and his wife Dominique were on a late-night snack run when they came across a homeless man shivering in the parking lot.
After reaching their car, the couple felt it wasn’t right to leave the shivering homeless man to freeze in the parking lot.
The shirt off your back
The man was found wearing only a shirt, boxers, socks, and shoes as he had lost his pants somewhere along the way.
As Richards got out of the car to approach the homeless man, his wife, Dominique, initially wasn’t sure if it was a good idea and started recording the encounter on her phone.
“My husband just was like: I think I’m gonna go give him my pants. And I was like ‘you’re not gonna give him your pants, stop! We’ll just go home and we’ll go grab something and we’ll come back,’” she told Inside Edition.
However, Richards was concerned that the man might not be there if they returned later, so he decided to take action.
Upon conversing with him, the couple discovered that the homeless man’s name was David, and for months he had been wearing the same clothes. With temperatures dropping to the 30s at night, his clothing was inadequate to keep him warm.
Richards then offered his pants to David.
“I pointed to my pants and ‘if I were to give you my pants would you take them?’ and he said ‘absolutely I will take those pants.’ And I mean within a split second – I didn’t even hesitate – I just took off my pants,” he said.
According to The Daily Mail, the video of his altruistic act garnered more than 1.6 million views in just a short time.
Without hesitation
During his interview with Inside Edition, Richards was questioned about the man’s response to his kind gesture.
“He had this kind of deer in the headlights look like ‘oh my gosh are you serious?’”
After Richards gave him his pants, the man quickly put them on and the two shared a hug before Richards returned to his car. In an interview with Inside Edition, Richards revealed that he saw the man again a month later and was pleased to see him still wearing the pants. However, some commenters found this to be both heartwarming and depressing at the same time.
More people like him
While several commenters commended Richards for his act of kindness, some made an even more compelling point:
“Everyone [is] saying ‘we need more people like him’ and not ‘we need to be like him.’”
It is true that sometimes we tend to blame the world for not being a better place, without realizing our own responsibility to make a difference. It is astonishing to see how little some people have, even when we are having a bad day ourselves. This is why it is crucial to give whenever possible, although one doesn’t need to give away their own pants while wearing them.
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