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Submitted Story

Paying It Forward At Home Depot

Posted 1 month ago by Dan Fisher

I want to share with you a wonderful story about “Paying it forward” from just last weekend. I was at our local Home Depot in New Jersey waiting to rent a truck to transport some building materials I had purchased earlier in the day. I was informed that I would have to wait up to 2 hours for the next truck, this after already waiting a while earlier in the day for a truck to become available. The older gentleman working at Home Depot informing me of the necessary wait seemed weary from having to deliver this same message to many other impatient do-it-yourselfers. I was told that another customer, waiting by the side of the counter, would have the next available truck and he would have it out for an extended period of time.

When I asked the older gentleman if he knew of any contractors with a pick up truck that I could pay to deliver the materials for me, he part moaned and part laughed that HE had a pickup truck, but it was stolen in a car jacking just a couple of days ago. He explained that it had been his father’s truck and in addition to having $4,000 in new parts just installed, it had a tremendous amount of sentimental value to him.

As luck would have it, a few years back I started an on-line program to help victims of car thefts enlist the help of their neighbors in recovering stolen cars. My brother-in-law had his own pick-up truck stolen from in front of our apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn and the vehicle wasn’t recovered for many weeks despite it sitting on the street, two neighborhoods down collecting parking tickets. When we went to collect his truck it occurred to me that if we could let local citizens know which vehicles are stolen, they could assist the police in recovering these vehicles. The police, I soon learned, had higher priorities than checking to see if cars were in fact stolen or not, but they were very keen to get tips on stolen cars that they could quickly recover.

I mentioned to the Home Depot gentleman that I might be able to be of some assistance to him in helping to get his truck recovered. I explained that the program works by sending information on stolen vehicles to residents of the communities in the general vicinity of where the vehicle was stolen. These “Tippers” keep a look out for the missing vehicles and report them to the police if they locate them. If their tip leads to a vehicle recovery we provide a cash reward. The program has already assisted the police in recovering scores of stolen cars and continues to grow. Over 27,000 citizens are participating in the program as well as hundreds of law enforcement agencies which automatically receive information from our tippers on vehicles stolen in their region.

The Home Depot gentleman’s face lit up when he heard about the program and he went on to explain that because his truck had been stolen he was forced to take two buses to get to work. It was only then that I noticed that he required a cane to walk. I gave him the url http://www.StolenCarReports.com and told him to call me if he had any problems registering his vehicle. He shared that he did not have easy access to the internet, nor an email address, so I took down all of the relevant information on his vehicle and told him I would personally register the vehicle and send out the alerts to the thousands of users in the region. At this point I do not know which one of us felt better about the exchange. We were warmly shaking one another’s hands and having one of those wonderful moments where two people, from different backgrounds and different stations in life, connect on a very human level.

But wait, the story gets even better. The customer who had been waiting for the truck ahead of me was listening to the entire exchange and reviewed the website from my blackberry. He was similarly touched by the exchange and offered to transport my wood for me in the truck that had just been returned to the shop. He and I proceeded to load up his materials and then my own, and drive to my home to drop them off. He refused to take any money from me for gas, saying that after witnessing me offering to help the gentleman at Home Depot it would be irresponsible to not “pay it forward” himself.

He drove off with a grin as big my own. It was the sort of day that gives one hope for the future.

-Dan Fisher

Define what responsibility means to you.