Elderly Man with Flat Tire Shown Kindness by QuikTrip Employee in Heartwarming Photo
A gas station employee has been praised for helping a 91-year-old man change a flat tire.
Jared Stice is currently working at a QuikTrip gas station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but he hopes to attend the Tulsa Fire Academy.
While Stice was at work, 91-year-old Arthur McAfee walked into the gas station and asked if anybody knew how to change a flat tire.
McAfee had been leaving the grocery store when he realized his tire was flat, he later told KOTV-DT.
He pulled into the QuikTrip gas station, confident that someone there would be kind enough to help.
“I don’t think you can find a nicer bunch of young people than they are,” McAfee said of the QuikTrip employees.
McAfee was right.
Stice told McAfee that he knew how to change a tire and followed the 91-year-old outside to his van.
Stice quickly changed the tire, not concerned with the cold weather or his lack of warm clothing.
“It took like 10 minutes to fix. Nobody else was helping him,” Stice said. “Treat people how you want to be treated.”
Neither man knew that a bystander snapped a photo of the kindhearted moment and posted it online.
Stice found out about the photo that night when his girlfriend pointed it out.
“I was going to bed. She sent me a text that said look on Facebook, there’s a picture of you going around,” Stice said. “I looked and there was a picture of me on the ground. No one knew it was me yet.”
McAfee said he found out about the photo from his sister, who lives in Vernon, Texas.
McAfee generously offered to pay him for his work, but Stice declined, saying the act of kindness was the right thing to do.
Stice later learned from one of McAfee’s grandsons, who turned out to be a friend of Stice’s, that the 91-year-old was battling skin cancer.
Stice recently passed his EMT exam and has applied to be accepted into the Tulsa Fire Academy. With a servant’s heart and willingness to lead the way, it seems Stice would make a strong addition to Tulsa’s fire and rescue community.
We wish both men all the best.
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