Griffin Brody walks up the front steps of the little house in Charlotte, North Carolina, gently sets the three bags of groceries on the doorstep, knocks twice, and retreats to his black Mercedes-Benz SUV.
“Someone reached out, said their elderly grandparent needed assistance. I was happy to offer that assistance,” says Brody, 23, as he puts the vehicle in drive and pulls away from the curb, never looking back at the house. “I really haven’t taken any steps to verify the people that I’m delivering to, but … if I don’t get paid back, it is what it is. I don’t think this is really the time to be worried (about that).”
What has been worrying him?
The current plight of the area’s older and retired, a population believed to be among the most at-risk as the global coronavirus pandemic starts to try to gain a foothold in and around Charlotte — and a population that is struggling to decide how safe it is to venture out to a crowded grocery store.
So, Brody — a 2019 University of Tennessee graduate who moved to Charlotte last August to work for start-up PetScreening as part of a fellowship offered by Venture for America — made a short and sweet post on the social news website Reddit:
“Please, if you or anyone you know needs errands run for them, completely free, let me help. I will run any errand regardless of (how) menial. I lost my grandmother and grandfather this year and do not want anyone else to have to if they can help it.”
When he logged on again a few days later, he had no requests for deliveries yet — probably, he admits, because few if any of the people in the demographic he’d like to help are on Reddit. But he says he had close to 20 messages from other Reddit users offering to help him fulfill delivery requests.
Someone also suggested he try posting to Nextdoor. Brody hadn’t heard of it. “Nextdoor is kind of a local Facebook, mostly for boomers,” the person told him. “If you are looking to help local seniors, it is absolutely the spot, because everyone would know everyone on a local level.”
It worked. His phone started buzzing. And by the end of the day, he’d made three runs. On Saturday, one of his deliveries took him from the house he shares with two roommates all the way up to Mooresville, a 60-mile round trip. The total cost of the grocery order wasn’t even $50.
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One older gentleman, Brody says, contacted him just looking for someone to talk to; he met him for coffee at Amelie’s on Saturday morning. Another person asked him if he’d go to Lowe’s and pick up some nails for them. Just some nails. Brody obliged.
As nearly always happens when civilization shows any sign of unraveling, negative things start to happen. In this case, some of it is annoying and perplexing, like toilet paper shortages at grocery stores. Some of it, meanwhile, is much more appalling, like those guys the New York Times recently wrote about who vacuumed up all the hand sanitizer they could find across two states and then started price-gouging online.
But it’s also not hard to find people out there doing good for one another. Just a couple of examples:
In Matthews, North Carolina, The Loyalist Market announced on Facebook it would provide sandwiches to all children who won’t be getting their free lunches because of state school closures. (“We hope to be a small part of getting our community through this unprecedented and challenging time,” the post said.)
In Gastonia, N.C., there’s a Little Free Library behind Ashbrook High School that is being stocked right now not with books, but with food “for those who find themselves in need.” (“If you know of a child who doesn’t have the transportation, please private message us and we will make arrangements to get some food to them,” wrote Katie Houser Sims, who tends to the library.)
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Brody says that part of what motivated him was seeing a series of posts on Twitter from a woman named Rebecca Mehra — a professional runner — who was on her way into a grocery store in Bend, Ore., when she heard an older woman yelling to her through a just-barely-opened car window. The woman in the car was nearly in tears, afraid to get out and go in. She asked Mehra if she’d shop for her, Mehra said yes, so the woman gave Mehra $100 and a list and Mehra did the good deed.
“I know it’s a time of hysteria and nerves, but offer to help anyone you can,” Mehra wrote. “Not everyone has people to turn to.”
Brody, in fact, says he encountered a similar situation at the Publix near his office in Cornelius: He saw an older woman crying in the middle of the store — “she was overwhelmed and terrified to touch everything. (But) I was too timid and did not offer to help, and it ate me up. I wanted to help as many people as I could.”
Before long, he made his initial offer on Reddit.
Now? He wants to fill all of his free time with deliveries. (“What else am I gonna do? Otherwise I’d be bored because everything’s closed down. This way, I’m not bored.”) So he’s reached out to more than 100 religious institutions — churches, temples, mosques — and has told them to point their elderly in his direction.
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