10 Acts of Kindness From Strangers Who Noticed a Stalled Car, a Lost Pouch, and a Crying Kid

I was 8 months pregnant with sciatica. The doctor suggested pool therapy. On the 1st day, two empty loungers were “reserved” with towels. Exhausted, I moved one to rest. An hour later, a man stomped over yelling, “How dare you touch my spot!” I gasped when without warning, he dared to reach past me and aggressively yank the towel right off the backrest, knocking my swim bag onto the wet concrete.

To clarify, I had never touched his towel; I had merely moved the heavy wooden lounger a few inches into the shade so I could sit on the edge. I had just finished forty-five grueling minutes of water-walking exercises in the pool, and my lower back was in absolute agony.

He wasn’t acting like a cartoon villain, just a deeply frustrated, red-faced father wrangling two shivering toddlers. “We’ve been using this spot all morning,” he snapped, stressed and exhausted himself. “I only stepped away to take my kids to the restroom, you can’t just hijack our chairs!”

Before I could awkwardly brace my arms to push my heavy frame up, a short, sharp whistle blew. The on-duty lifeguard walked directly over.

“Sir,” the lifeguard said calmly, stepping to the foot of my chair. “Facility policy states that chairs cannot be reserved with unattended towels while you leave the deck area. She is recovering from her water therapy. There are three open chairs right over there by the shallow end for you and your kids.”

Realizing he was in the wrong with the pool rules—and suddenly looking highly embarrassed to be losing his temper at a pregnant woman in front of the staff—the man’s anger instantly deflated. He let out a tired sigh, offered a clipped apology for snapping, and steered his toddlers toward the open chairs. The lifeguard kindly handed me a fresh bottle of water, and the anxious knot in my chest finally melted away.

I know it’s a very generic statement, but I experienced a true act of kindness. Here is what happened.

I was in the drive through line of a pharmacy. Each car was taking roughly about 5min. When my turn came they wanted to change shift so I figured it’s better to turn off ignition. After about 10 min I was done. I had probably about 6-7 cars behind me.

I try to start my car and nada. It just won’t start. I start panicking. My battery is completely depleted. I’m dreading the moment people start honking. I get out and inform the car behind me that my car is not starting.

The lady in the car (let’s call her L) said let me know if she can help push it. I say, “I got this.” I try to push it so people can get on, but the stupid emergency break was engaged and I couldn’t disengage it.

At this point an older gentleman (call him M) behind the lady’s car gets out and he tries his luck at disengaging or pushing. We all come to the same conclusion. The car needs a jump.

The lady immediately gets in her car, backs out of the line coming around the front of the car and gives me the jump cables. M connects the the cable to the other car and boom my car starts. I am constantly saying some combination of sorrys and thank yous and they are just smiling and saying ’don’t worry’, ’happens to all of us’. I was floored by the kindness. Not a single honk.

M and L could have been rude or mean, they could have said things that were not kind. They could could have just not helped.

I promise you that I’m going to pay this forward. If I get a chance to help someone, I’m going to do it and I’m going to not stop after that either. I am writing this just to say thank you to the good people. It’s probably not going to reach L and M but no matter. If this story helps even a little bit in restoring your faith in humanity, I’m happy!

I paid extra for my window seat, so when a mom asked me to move for her daughter, I said no. She was furious. Later, I caught her bent over my bag. She jerked back when she saw me watching. At the airport, security stopped me after the second scan. “Ma’am, who had access to this bag?”

We had just cleared customs from an international arrival and were going through the TSA screening checkpoint for our connecting flights. Confused, I told the officer that only I had access to it, though I mentioned the woman on the plane had been hovering over it.

The officer unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a bright pink iPad in a thick, bulky case—a large electronic device that always requires separate screening.

It belonged to her daughter.

I looked around and spotted the mother a few lanes over, frantically digging through her tote bag while her daughter stood by, looking panicked. I called out to her, and the officer held up the pink tablet. The mother’s expression shifted from panic to intense relief, and then she flushed bright red as she rushed over.

She quickly explained to the officer what had happened. Her daughter had dropped the tablet under our row during the flight. When the mother saw it on the floor in the dim cabin, she mistook my open backpack pocket for her own bag and slipped it inside.

When I caught her, she felt too embarrassed by our earlier fight to admit her mistake. Because they hadn’t needed the iPad for passport control, she only realized it was missing when they reached the security checkpoint.

The officer verified the tablet was hers, handed it back, and cleared my bag.

Our connecting flights were in the same terminal. A few minutes later, I saw her struggling to manage a heavy suitcase, her daughter’s backpack, and an exhausted kid who had started crying.

I could have kept walking. Instead, I walked over and grabbed the handle of her suitcase.

She looked at me. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

We walked toward the gates together. She apologized for how she had spoken to me on the plane. I told her I understood why she wanted her daughter beside her, but I had paid specifically for that window seat and wanted to keep it.

“Fair,” she said.

By the time we parted ways, neither of us was angry anymore. Sometimes empathy starts after people get off on the wrong foot.

Shout out to a stranger for a random act of kindness.

Today, I was out getting my typical Starbucks coffee on 7th st/Wiletta, and (for reference) there are two entrances to that Starbucks drive-thru. It’s super inconvenient and people can be quite rude when forcing their way in line from the 7th st entrance. Anyways, there was a white car that was waiting to hop in line from the other entrance from 7th st, and I let them jump into line ahead of me.

I’ll be honest, it was initially a slightly reluctant decision on my part since the line was super long and I’m a home-health therapist and I really didn’t want to run late for my next appointment. But I figured, eh, best to let them jump in since I had seen they were patiently waiting to get in line without forcing their way in.

Eventually, when I pulled up to the window to receive my drink, I was promptly blown away. This random person that went ahead of me had generously gifted me a $25 Starbucks gift card for something really simple. They obviously didn’t know this but the gift held extra joy for me because I’m wrapping up my undergraduate degree finals next week and coffee is life (especially in finals time).

Their random act of random kindness completely made my day. It made me think in this weird time of life, it means so much to be kind. Thank you so much to the random person who was so incredibly thoughtful. I look forward to paying it forward and making someone else’s day excellent.

I was 12 when I got my first period in the middle of a shopping trip with my dad. Of course, I had no idea what was happening. I just knew there were stains on my jeans.

My dad panicked even harder than I did. He rushed me into a pharmacy, but once we got there, he clearly had no idea what to buy. He kept staring at the shelves like he was trying to solve an exam question. I wanted to disappear.

Then a woman standing nearby quietly asked me, “Is this your first one?” I nodded. She didn’t laugh or make a big deal out of it. She picked out pads, handed my dad a packet of painkillers, and then bought me a chocolate bar. Before she left, she leaned toward me and said, “Nothing is wrong with you. You just weren’t prepared today.” That sentence stayed with me.

Years later, I saw a teenage girl crying in a school bathroom because she had bled through her skirt. I gave her my sweater to tie around her waist and found her a pad. She kept apologizing. I told her the exact same thing that stranger had told me years before.

I want to express my appreciation for the kindness of strangers I have witnessed or directly benefited from in the past few weeks from fellow Madisonians.

A couple weeks ago on that really lovely warm spring day when people were out and about, a gentleman jogging on Nakoma Rd tripped and fell injuring himself. I was right nearby walking my dog but did not have a cell phone to call for help.

A woman driving stopped traffic (the man had fallen on the side of the busy street) and called 911. Another man behind her got out of his car and helped the injured man to the side of the street and waited for EMS.

Fellow drivers, though they could not see exactly what was going on, why traffic was blocked, were patient while the scene cleared. The jogger did not appear to be too hurt, though more so than something that could just be brushed off. Kindness of strangers to help another was heartening to witness.

Days later my daughter unknowingly dropped her phone in a downtown parking garage on a Friday evening. A woman happened upon the phone, caught a text I sent checking on my daughter, contacted me back, and arranged to leave the phone at a local business for us to pickup. She went out of her way to help us and was very kind to do so.

Yet another instance in which I am very grateful for the kindness of strangers here in Madison occurred last night during the Friday rush hour. I had just stepped out with my dog for a walk. Crossing Midvale Blvd my dog suddenly collapsed. We got to the sidewalk where he laid down and clearly something was very wrong.

A couple saw our distress and went to my husband a few doors down so he could bring the car to go to the vet. Another couple stopped, the woman was a Vet student, and gave my dog CPR right there on the sidewalk. The neighbor whose sidewalk we were on offered what he could in terms of going into his house if needed.

By then the first couple had gotten my husband and we drove our dog to the UW Vet school trailing the Vet student who led us there in her car knowing the construction around the Vet school was confusing for those unaware. She had called ahead so UW Vet staff were waiting to help my dog as soon as we pulled up.

Unfortunately, our dog did pass away (otherwise a healthy 6-year-old, may have been heart related). UW Vet school staff were wonderful allowing my family, including three kids, to say goodbye to our dog. He passed doing what he loved, going for a walk.

So many people offered their help and kindness in a tough time. I was once again in just the last few weeks so grateful to receive help from others. Thank you Madisonians, it is heart warming to see people helping one another out.

At 24, I had my first “real” office job and was absolutely convinced everyone else knew what they were doing. They did not. But I didn’t know that yet.

One afternoon, my manager tore apart a report I’d spent days preparing. The numbers were due to the VP the next morning, but he still chose to shred my work in front of the whole team. By 6 p.m., everyone had gone home and I was sitting in my car googling, “How do you know if you should quit your job?” There was a knock on my window.

It was a woman from our corporate office who had been invited to sit in on the budget section. She was a complete stranger; I didn’t even know her name. She said, “You’re not bad at your job.” I immediately started crying, which was humiliating.

She leaned against my car and told me that five years earlier she’d made a mistake so expensive she’d been certain Human Resources was going to fire her. Instead, an older colleague helped her fix it and told her, "Being embarrassed is not the same as being incapable.

I wrote that quote on a sticky note the next morning and kept it on my monitor for the rest of my career.

I limped my car into a gas station at 11:30 p.m. with a completely shredded front passenger tire. A guy in a hoodie walked over and asked, “Need a jack?” I immediately locked my doors.

Yes, I know. He saw me do it. Instead of getting offended, he stepped back to show some respect for my boundaries, pointed toward his truck, and shouted through the window, “I’ve got a heavy-duty lug wrench. You can stay in the car.”

That somehow made me feel worse. I cracked the window, apologized, and popped the trunk so he could get my spare. He spent twenty minutes fighting with the rusted lug nuts, eventually using a metal pipe from his truck bed for leverage to break them loose. Once the spare was on, I rolled down the window and offered him the $40 I had in my wallet.

He wouldn’t take it. I asked why he’d spent half an hour changing a tire in the dark for someone who had basically treated him like a criminal. He wiped the grease off his jeans and shrugged. “I spent my twenties driving a clunker and got stranded more times than I can count. Someone always stopped for me.”

On the last Saturday of September 2025, I was 66 years old and sitting on a bench outside the laundromat on Main Street in Cortez, Colorado, with 40 minutes left on my dryer. A green zippered bank pouch sat next to me.

I opened the pouch. Inside were $2,310 in fives, tens and twenties, a roll of raffle ticket stubs, and an index card in blue pen. Fall Fun Run, Cortez Elementary, deposit Monday.

The school is 2 blocks away, and a banner for the run had hung on the school fence all week. I had the option of calling the police non-emergency line. Then the pouch sits in a drawer until Monday, and the owner spends the whole weekend not knowing.

In 1994 I left an envelope with $640 of rent money on the roof of my car and drove off. I remember the hour I spent not knowing where the money had gone. My empathy comes from 1994.

I left my towels in the dryer and walked over. In the gravel lot behind the gym, I saw a woman in a purple volunteer T-shirt standing with a phone at her ear, working down a list of names. I learned her name was Gwen Ochoa, the PTA treasurer.

She told me she had parked on Main Street because the school lot was full, loaded folding tables into her trunk, and set the pouch down while she dug for her keys. She couldn’t remember where she had put it down, which is why she hadn’t gone back to the bench. By the time I found her, she had been scouring the school grounds and asking every volunteer if they had seen a green bag.

I held the pouch out. Gwen sat down on the curb. She said she had planned to write a check for the full $2,310 from her own savings on Monday. She tried to hand me $200 from the pouch as a thank-you. I said no. Before I walked away, she asked for my name and mailing address so the PTA could send a proper acknowledgment. I jotted it down for her and walked back to the laundromat. My dryer had 11 minutes left.

On Friday, a manila envelope came in the mail with 23 hand-drawn cards from a fourth-grade class. One showed a green bag with legs. I taped the green-bag card to my refrigerator. Gwen later told me the fun run money went to the sixth-grade camp fund.

I was standing in the baby aisle at Walmart doing math on my phone. Formula, diapers, gas to get home. I could only afford two of the three. My son was six weeks old, my maternity leave had been unpaid, and I was so exhausted that tears started rolling down my face right there between the wipes and diaper cream.

An older woman reached past me for a package of diapers and said, “Those leak. Get the blue box.” I laughed because it was such a normal thing to say when I felt like my whole life was falling apart. We talked for maybe two minutes. She asked how old my baby was. I told her.

When I finally dragged my cart up to the checkout, still stressing over what to put back, I saw the same woman paying in the next lane over. Before she left, she walked up to my cashier and handed her a $100 bill. “Put her stuff on this,” she said, nodding toward me.

The kindness of it made me cry harder. The money covered the diapers, the formula, and left me with enough cash in my account to fill up my tank to get home. I rushed over and threw my arms around her neck, overwhelmed with gratitude. She just patted my back and told me I was doing a good job.