A nursing aide in Bogart, Georgia, is thanking a family for helping her again.
TunDe Hector and Chris Wright crossed paths once in 2014. Wright spotted Hector, then a stranger, walking along the side of the road with a gas can. Her car had run out of gas and she was heading to a gas station half a mile away.
Wright told ABC News he dropped his family at church and returned to help the woman. He gave her a ride to the gas station, paid to fill up her gas can then drove her back to her car. Before leaving, he gave her all the money in his wallet, which was about $40.
Three years later, Wright’s mother was coping with complications from Parkinson’s disease. His parents hired a nursing aide to help. One aide in particular made a big impact on Wright’s parents.
"My dad called me after she leaves and said, 'Hey, I got a lady that we need to use because for whatever it is, there's something different about her that I feel better when she's in the house and your mom loves her as well,'" Wright told ABC News. "And I said, 'Oh, great.' I texted her and set up a time for her and I to meet to talk about the times she can care for her and what we wanted to have done."
During their meeting, Wright did not immediately recognize that the aide, who happened to be Hector, was the woman he helped years ago. She didn’t recognize him at first either.
During their meeting, she shared a story of how a man helped her once when her car ran out of gas.
“I just looked at her and I said, ‘TunDe, that was me.’ And we both just start crying. And she said, take your hat off. And so I took my hat off and she said, ‘It was you.’ And we both, we just cried and had a moment right there,” Wright said.
Hector cared for Wright's mother until she died on July 9. Instead of flowers, the Wright family requested that friends and family make a donation to a YouCaring page to raise money for Hector's education.
In just one week, the page raised more than $8,000.
A video shared to YouTube shows Hector’s emotional reaction to receiving the money.
“Y’all don’t know how worried -- I was so worried (about) how I’m going to pay for my school,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed.”
In the weeks since, the page has raised even more money. It currently stands at more than $29,000.
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