For the past 13 Christmases, a firefighter dressed as Santa Claus has repelled off the Belize Bridge to deliver gifts to children living below in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Guatemala City. Heart-warming and heroic is a lovely combination, isn’t it?
Forget for a moment that Santa’s belly and beard look less than authentic, and imagine instead the joy this wonderful tradition must bring to those kids. It makes me feel lucky and a little misty all at once.
There are so many stories like this one that spark chain-reactions of kindness. You’ve heard of the Layaway Santas paying off others’ layaway accounts, right? I’m sure there’s more goodness out there, too. I believe in it! Tell me: What’s your favorite Good Samaritan story?
P.S. — Another sweet December story.
Photos courtesy of Reuters/Jorge. Dan Lopez as seen on BuzzFeed.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I recently had a lady in front of me at the Starbucks drive-through pay for my drink. When I pulled up for my coffee, the Starbucks employee said, “It’s been taken care of!” This is a nice easy thing to do for strangers and I am going to start doing it too.
Thanks for sharing such a great story. Marie – I love that, I’m going to have to do that next time at Starbucks.
It’s kind of weird, but I love it! I don’t have a story to share, but before we got a fast pass toll thingie, I’d pay the toll of the car behind me sometimes just for the good feelings. So kind of selfish, I guess ;)
I love this! The look on those babies’ faces is priceless.
Not exactly a good Good Samaritan but I was thinking how Santa comes down our river in a boat and hand out candy to children standing on docks along the way. Santa is so adaptable to different geographies!
That is so sweet! I had to show my kids, they were like “Wow! Santa is sooo nice!” For real.
The season is getting to me – I only had to read the first sentence and I was already tearing up! Anything which encourages people to think of others should be encouraged, and Christmas fits the bill nicely :)
My story isn’t as amazing as a repelling Santa, but my “Santa” Gloria is pretty wonderful too. I wrote out the experience on my blog. http://tinyurl.com/76ccjnp
I love the expressions on the faces of those sweet children – made me teary. Such love!
oh, how sweet! i love this!
Beautiful, thank you for sharing this with us!
This is a great story! A family at my daughter’s school is struggling this holiday season for a variety of reasons. I mailed them a holiday card with a small donation in it… annonymously of course. It made me feel good to know that my family and I could help… even just a little bit.
When I first read the title of your post, I thought you meant “commando” in the sense they used it on “Friends.” Oops!
This story is truly lovely. I just love firefighters.
That is just so wonderfully sweet. It’s these sorts of stories that restores my faith in humankind
I, too, thought this was going to be about an underwear-less Santa repelling off a bridge.
Oh goodness. I love everything about this. Thanks for sharing!
That is a very nice thing to do. I love it when people do things just to help others, very touching.
So fun! I love doing nice things for people, but mine always turn out sort of awkward. Like here http://booherblogs.blogspot.com/2011/12/good-deeds-gone-wrong.html
Glad to know people are out there succeeding in good deed-iness!
Well it looks like I’m not the only one that’s experience this, but I actually work at Starbucks and every year around this time of year I get to experience someone start the chain of paying for the next person’s beverage/order in drive-thru and get such joy out of seeing how long it will last! Working at Starbucks, you experience a lot of positive connections but also a lot of nastiness in people. Seeing this happen every year is always a morale booster. =)