Maricopa teenager gives an 80-year-old stranger the shoes off his feet

Jordan Hope, 18, was driving along John Wayne Parkway in Maricopa, Arizona, on Monday when he noticed an older man trying to cross the busy road with a walker, in a pair of shoes that were barely holding together, ABC15 reported.

He stopped the car and got out. He took off the size 13 Nike slides he was wearing, gave them to the man, and was left standing in the road in his white socks.

Yareli Madrid saw it from the car park of a drug store and filmed part of it on her phone. She did not know then that the City of Maricopa would share the video. Jordan said the man did not understand at first what was happening. “He was confused because, it’s out of the normal,” he told ABC15.

The drug store

Jordan said he felt another “tug” to follow the man into the drug store. There he helped him get his prescription and bought him his favourite sweets, peanut M&M’s. Then he called a rideshare to take him home, and followed it in his own car to make sure the man got inside safely.

It was at the house that he learned the man was 80 and that his wife had died two weeks earlier.

I felt God speak to me to do something nice for someone else. You don’t know what they’re going through. I didn’t know he lost his wife, or that he has pain in his legs, or he needed new shoes.Jordan Hope, to ABC15

Since

The man spoke to ABC15 by phone but did not want to take part in the story. He said he finds it hard to ask for help, that Jordan’s kindness had baffled him, and that he was grateful to have made a new friend at such a difficult time.

Jordan recently finished high school, wants to build computers, and is about to start work as a food server. The two plan to stay in touch and may go to church together. Jordan has also started a crowdfunding page for the man, to help him with life after the death of his wife.