A flat tire, blown gasket or leaky radiator throws a total wrench in your day. Unexpected car repairs can pop up at any time and leave you stranded on the side of the road.
Even worse, they can leave you broke. It definitely isn’t cheap maintaining a vehicle.
Zach Bowen, 19, needed work done on his 2006 Ford Taurus. It may be old, but it gets him around and that’s what counts.
So Zach drove his car to the family-owned West Omaha Auto Service, which, for decades, has been helping car owners keep their vehicles running.
Snafu when paying
Service manager Anthony Oxtal was ringing up Zach’s ticket, but the credit card his mom Sherry was using to pay for their bill just wouldn’t go through.
Sometimes credit card companies may flag a purchase due to suspicion of fraud or maybe there isn’t enough room on the card for a purchase. Whatever the reason may be, Zach and his mom were frustrated that their credit card was being declined.
The 19-year-old was at a loss and didn’t know what to do. But Anthony did.
“I love my customers. They’re awesome,” Anthony said.
What to do?
So he told Zach not to worry about it, that he trusted the mother-son duo to return Monday and they would figure out the situation then.
“I let him just take the car for the weekend,” he said.
Sherry, Zach’s mom, phoned the shop first thing Monday morning to pay for her son’s bill. She didn’t want to delay paying their debt by a single second.
But much to her surprise, the bill wasn’t nearly as costly as it was on Friday.
A good Samaritan
What on earth had happened over the weekend?
“When I called in he said, ‘I have something here for you,’” Sherry said.
It turns out that a complete stranger who was there picking up his vehicle Friday at the same time as Zach saw how stressed out the young man was about being unable to pay.
This man, who didn’t know Zach from anyone else in the repair shop lobby, felt sorry for him and decided to help.
The sweetest note
The man’s wife had written an incredibly kind note on the back of an envelope and slipped it into the key drop box. But it’s what the envelope contained that floored everyone.
“I saw the flat one and then I saw the note and I was like wow that was nice,” Anthony said.
Sherry was stunned when Anthony told her about the surprise.
“It was a big shock. I was definitely in tears,” she said.
Life-changing moment
Zach declared that he was going to frame the envelope. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before.
“You guys are a prime example that there is still kindness in this world,” Zach said to the anonymous couple. “It really touched me and now I’m eternally grateful.”
His mom says this random act of kindness isn’t stopping here.
“I definitely want to pay it forward for someone else, so that it keeps on going,” Sherry said.
Watch the video below and be prepared to grin from ear to ear when you see just what happened to Zach and his mom. There still are wonderful people in this world and this encounter is proof.
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