Age 10 Boy and Friend Brave Snowstorm to Surprise 80 Hospital Workers with Act of Kindness
On Feb. 1, a 10-year-old boy named Christian Stone was shoveling driveways in Westerly, Rhode Island. That’s not an odd occurrence this time of year in that place, but Stone was clearing driveways as an act of kindness to his neighbors.
Free of charge. Just to be kind.
But Stone had been looking forward to this snowfall for another reason. A month prior, during a different storm, the boy had been struck by an idea he couldn’t shake.
What if he could help out healthcare workers by clearing off their cars for them when they left work? It was a small thing, but something good and necessary — something that the nurses and doctors themselves couldn’t possibly be looking forward to at the end of their long shifts.
A family friend of the Stones, Abbey Meeker, 29, was taken with Christian’s plan and promised to help him.
“Christian wanted to do something good for nurses about a month ago when it stormed, and he said next time it snowed, he wanted to clean cars off for nurses because of COVID,” Meeker told WJAR-TV. “I told him I would come with him.”
“I was just thinking, like, they help us a lot — they’ve been helping us a lot through this whole pandemic, and I figured why don’t we help them, you know?” Stone explained.
“All day, every day the nurses here, they deal with the pandemic like COVID and they want to get home from work, so we thought we would make it a tiny bit easier for them by cleaning off their cars for them.”
So on Feb. 1, the two headed to the Westerly Hospital during a shift change to help out the hospital workers who were preparing to make the drive home in the snow.
“We kind of made it a game,” Meeker told CNN.
When a worker would use their remote to unlock or start their car, the two would run to clear it off in record time.
It was bitterly cold work, though, and Meeker admitted if it hadn’t been for Christian, she might have bailed earlier.
“If I had to do it by myself, I definitely would not have done it,” Meeker said. “But I knew how much it meant to Christian so I sucked it up.
“Christian is wise beyond his years. He’s my little partner in crime.”
“It’s been cold but extremely fun seeing how happy they get,” Stone added. “Some of them say, like, ‘Thank you so much’ and, you know, it’s just really happy to see them happy.”
Between the two of them, they cleared dozens of cars. People offered to pay them, but they only accepted $20 from two nurses who insisted and said they’d be angry if the do-gooders refused the payment.
“We came here around 2 o’clock, we cleaned off the first shift cars and the nurses came out,” Meeker said. “They thanked us.
“Honestly, we’ve probably done at least 80 cars. So we probably did … 20 here, 30 there, and another 20 until we called it quits.”
Stone was happy with the job they’d done and is no doubt planning some future act of kindness.
“I feel like, that I’ve I actually like helped someone out and that’s like a really good feeling, like when you know you helped, like someone’s been helped out,” he said.
“We want them to be able go home … see their family after a long day of work, you know?”
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