12 Travelers Whose Trip a Stranger Saved With a Hand-Knitted Shawl and $60 for a Seat Swap

On my first solo flight, I missed a connection with $14 in my wallet and a phone at 3 percent. A woman at the airport bookstore lent me her charger and bought me a pretzel without asking my name. On a road trip, at a gate or on a train, people help more often than we expect. These 12 travelers had a trip that went wrong — and a stranger stepped in.

When I was 16/17 ish, I was going with my family to New York. I wore a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and forgot to grab my sweatshirt out of my checked bag. It was a night flight, and I was freezing trying to sleep. I was away from my family next to this older, foreign tourist couple, and tried to do my best to sleep while I was freezing.

I woke up after a few hours, and realized I wasn’t as cold as I was before. I sat up and saw I had this hand knitted shawl wrapped around my shoulders. The lady next to me must have seen the quizzical look on my face, as she then says in broken English, “You shake in sleep, I have this” pointing to the shawl.

I thanked her profusely and she said, “Go to sleep, he’s sleeping” pointing to her husband who had started to rouse. I fell back asleep for the rest of the flight and thanked her a million times more as we were getting off the plane. What a lovely woman.

“Second stranger brought me gas & apparently that’s all I needed.”

A young woman films her stalled car by a busy road, hood up. The words on the screen tell the story step by step: she calls a friend, googles how to jump-start a car, and then strangers start pulling over one after another.

The third stranger pushes her car to the other side of the road. The fourth, a mechanic, checks it and finds nothing working. Her caption gives away the ending.

“I got a flat tire in an unfamiliar area, these men stopped and offered to help. They ended up doing all the work and wouldn’t accept money when I offered! Bonus: my lil man in the car keeping me safe from strangers”

His name’s Chip and he turns 16 this year!

“The best souvenir”

Clip after clip from a summer rail trip across Europe shows the people the author met along the way bent over one small notebook: at a café table, on a floor, in a hall with a patterned stone floor. The words on the screen explained what they were writing: “Coming back from travel with a journal full of life advice from strangers is one I never want to forget.” The last shot is a page covered in handwriting.

I was taking a flight from Pgh to FLA with my two-year-old son. It was early March and a big snow storm came in. We received about 8 inches of snow in the few hours before the flight. Needless to say, the trip to the airport was a nightmare.

Even though the flight was delayed we barely made it to the plane on time. The plane was fully loaded and our seats were near the rear. I boarded the plane with my son in a carrier in one hand and a carry-on bag in the other. I was completely stressed as I looked down the aisle of the packed plane.

Just then, a tall, lanky man wearing a cowboy hat stood up from his first class seat. He proceeded to take the carrier with my son in it from my right hand. He caught me by surprise and I was confused. He then carried my son to the back of the plane.

When he confirmed the seats with me he then buckled the carrier with my son in it into the seat. He then tipped his cowboy hat, winked at me and returned to first class. What a gentleman!

“I’ll never forget!!!”

The video opens on clouds outside a plane window. Then the camera turns to the next seat: a woman in a cardigan holds the author’s little daughter on her lap, turning the pages of a magazine with her while the girl finally settles down, and her husband sits beside them.

The words on the screen are addressed to the couple: “To the random lady and her husband on the plane that helped me with my screaming daughter....” The last frames simply say “Thank you.”

“I gave my extra food to a homeless man this morning, then a stranger on my flight unexpectedly gave me $60.”

Fast forward to later today. I’m on my flight and a man asks if I would mind switching seats so he can sit next to his wife. I said yes without really thinking about it, grabbed my stuff, went back to his seat, and sat down.

A few minutes later, he walks all the way back to me and hands me something. I thought it was a piece of paper or something, so I just took it without looking.

Then I realized he had handed me $60! I immediately went, “No, no, no!” because I genuinely wasn’t expecting anything for switching seats. But he just smiled, insisted, and walked away before I could give it back.

I texted my mom about it and she said, “That’s the universe giving back to you because you gave your food to that man this morning.”

“POV you get a ride from Portugal to Spain with this little old man.”

The camera sits on the bow of a small red boat crossing a wide, misty river, with grey water ahead and a far shore barely visible. The words on the screen do all the talking: “Mum: don’t trust strangers. Me on a boat from Portugal to Spain with an old man who offered me a free ride.” The hashtags place the trip on the Camino de Santiago, the old pilgrim route into Spain.

“Met a very lovely man in the airport.”

While my boyfriend and I were waiting in line to get our boarding passes, I was jokingly kicking his suitcase, and an elderly gentleman behind us in line chimed in and asked, “Can anyone get in on kicking the bag?”

We exchanged a few more jokes before leaving the line, and then ended up accidentally sitting next to him at the gate! He joked that we must be following him, and then left for a bit before sitting in a different section.

After a little while of my bf and I just hanging out and being goofy, the man came back and tossed a $100 bill on my lap and said that we reminded him of him and his wife, and that he wanted us to have a nice dinner on him.

I’ve never experienced such a genuine act of kindness like that from a stranger before; it was really touching.

“Japanese stranger jumped off subway to help my daughter.”

My family was riding the subway in Tokyo when my 8-year-old daughter got it in her head the next station was our stop. She exited the subway car while her little sister yelled, “No, wrong stop!” and everyone on the train looked.

My wife realized what was happening and tried to get off too but she was slowed by the packed crowd. She shouted, “Stay at that station!” A young guy by the door heard the commotion and jumped out the doors right before they closed.

Back at the station, I saw the young guy standing with my daughter. I bowed deeply and said, “Arigato Gozaimasu.” My daughter told me she had cried a bit but then the young guy used [a translation app] to have her try to call me.

Thank you young guy for providing company and comfort to my daughter when she got lost! He was very nonchalant and humble about the whole thing but it really meant the world to me and her.

After that, my older daughter was really slow getting off the subway. She said she stopped crying once she realized she wasn’t alone.

I had started taking the train/bus home from college (I lived close enough to commute, but not close enough to justify driving) and it was my first or second day using public transport on my own. Somewhere between my school and the train station, I lost my money. Maybe it was stolen, maybe it fell out of my pocket, no idea.

So I stood at the ticket machine visibly frustrated, on the verge of tears because I couldn’t believe this would happen. My cellphone was dead and I didn’t even have enough to take the bus back to somewhere with WiFi to use my laptop.

An older gentleman, seemingly homeless, came up to me and asked me what was wrong. I explained what happened and he started putting quarters from his cup into the machine. It spit out a ticket, he handed it to me, and said, “God bless.”

Before this, I tried not to give to homeless people begging, but now I always do. You never know when one will give to you!

When I was first driving on my own, maybe a week or two after I got my license, I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and filled up on gas, only to suddenly realize I had much less cash than I thought I had — and was maybe four bucks short of being able to pay for what I had just put in my car.

In desperation, I told an elderly couple who had just pulled up about the situation, and begged them to lend me a few dollars. The husband told me he was sorry, but had “seen that scam too many times before.” At the verge of panicked tears, I was surprised by the voice of the elderly husband behind me — he said, “My wife told me not to be so cold-hearted” and handed me a five.

To this day, I never refuse any request for help that I can safely provide. That one act of needless, unexpected empathy led to me helping dozens, maybe hundreds, of other people throughout my life in ways which often amazed them.