He Snaps Photo of 'Skin and Bones' Homeless Man, Never Expected Brother To See It Online
Sadly, it seems like every day the number of people standing on the side of the road and asking for a few dollars’ worth of help is growing. Do you give them a little help or do you pass on by?
Everyone has their own way of responding. Johnny Servantez had conditioned himself to just keep walking. But then he saw Johnny Rhoades.
Rhoades was sitting outside of a flea market in Indianapolis looking for some help.
What grabbed Servantez’s attention was that Rhodes didn’t look like any other panhandler he had ever seen.
It’s hard to classify how bad Rhoades actually looked. Gaunt? Starving? Emaciated?
Servantez said that it looked like “his stomach was touching his back.”
He was so moved in fact that he broke his own rule and gave Rhoades some money. Then he took a picture of Rhoades and posted it online.
With the picture, he shared the location and asked anyone in the area to stop by and offer Rhodes a little something.
That picture made the social media rounds before landing on the screen of, perhaps, the last person Rhoades could imagine — his brother.
Danny Rhoades told RTV6, “I’m so sick to my stomach right now, I can’t function to know someone is living this way and looks this bad.”
Danny hasn’t seen his brother in over seven years. After their mother died, the two lost contact.
But seeing him like this, Danny knew that he had to help. Unfortunately, by that time, Johnny had moved on.
The internet would not take this for the ending to the story. Amy Renae Smith, who had no knowledge of the family but just wanted to help, set up a Facebook page where people could log tips and share details.
After much work by many concerned people, on Sept. 25, Johnny was located and reunited with Danny.
Smith posted to the Facebook page that all was well and the internet got the happy ending they were looking for.
She shared, “He had two meals, a [hot] shower, a pair of clean clothes, a room to himself with quiet, a king size bed, tv w/ cable, fridge, a microwave, Pepsi, & leftovers. He is safe, and resting.”
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