With all the daily reminders we have of the bad side of humanity, all it takes is one little demonstration of genuine kindness to melt our cynical hearts and make everything seem okay again. A high school student in Colorado shared a story of why he bought a classmate a new pair of Vans, and he's garnered more than 52,000 Facebook shares in three days.
"So I came out of my class yesterday to talk on the phone and I seen this girl named Ricky talking to her mom about her needing new shoes and I seen her playing with a hole under her shoe," Rafael Gomez Picazo wrote on Wednesday. "Her mom said she couldn't afford new shoes for her she needed to go to Walmart. So I went to vans because I seen that's what she had on. I came in today and I asked my teacher about her. She said her family hasn't been to financially stable. So hopefully she likes the shoes."
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In the video, which has more than 5 million views and counting, we see a teacher calling Ricky out of her class to meet Picazo. He explains that he saw her talking to her mom the day before, takes the box of Vans Sk8-Hi sneakers out of the bag.
"I didn't know what size you were, so I left the receipt in there," he adds.
"Thank you so much," she says, as they hug.
The vast majority of the comments on the video congratulate Picazo for his generosity.
"Need more ppl like this. He did an awesome thing," wrote Kenneth Young Jr.
"I'm in a glass case of emotions right now," Jordyn Williams said.
A few did raise the question of why Picazo decided to film his exchange, wondering if sharing the video was shaming Ricky while demanding praise for himself. He certainly didn't need to share this — and he definitely couldn't have planned for it to spread so far and wide. But if this video spawns even a couple of copycats who buy shoes for other students in their class, then it seems worth it.
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