Sometimes someone can save your life, even if they are complete strangers.
A petrol station employee was able to assist a woman who was stuck on the highway without fuel or money and with no way to get home.
Monet van Deventer from Cape Town, South Africa, soon discovered she didn’t have any cash or credit cards with her when she went to refuel.
She discovered she had forgotten her card just after starting to fill up, but the attendant, Nkosikho Mbele, was really sympathetic and realized that the woman had found herself in a difficult situation.
Monet attempted to stop him as soon as he approached the car to wash the windows.
“I had this strange feeling that I forgot my card. I then started looking for it, and while I was searching, Nkosikho started washing my windows,” van Deventer said to Times Live.
She said that he didn’t have to wash her windows since she had forgotten her credit card and couldn’t afford it. The worker was going to let her drive away when he saw the red warning light on her fuel gauge.
“I said to him, thanks for washing my windows but I can’t put petrol in today. He seemed stressed and shocked because he was looking at my fuel needle which was already in the red,” she added.
The 28-year-old gas worker had to refuse to allow the stranded woman back on the road since doing so may be hazardous. He offered to pay her gas bill of around 100 rands (about $7) so she could safely cross the N2 motorway with enough fuel. This was done out of kindness for her.
He grabbed his own bank card, went to the register, and paid for some gas.
“He said to me, ‘ma’am, you can’t run out of petrol on the N2’. And he said, ‘I’ll pay R100 and whenever you are near again you can just give me back my R100’,” Monet said.
Monet didn’t even had time to consider it, to be honest.
He insisted on helping this woman and began filling her gas tank.
She first mistakenly believed that it was a service offered by the corporation Shell at considerable expense when, in fact, it was only a private transaction.
“I thought, perhaps it was a business thing that Shell does this for you and then I saw him literally take his own card and pay for it. When I drove away it dawned on me what just happened.”
The amount was almost as much as what Mbele, who makes minimum wage, made in a single day.
The petrol attendant didn’t really have a lot of extra cash with a weekly salary of 1,100R (about $75). Even though he wasn’t sure when he would get his money back, he couldn’t let the woman go lost.
“I asked her how low is the fuel, and she said it was low. I asked her, ‘will you make it?’, and she said: ‘I’m not sure.’ I said let me just do this for you,” Mbele later said to Times Live.
A few days later, the woman came again bearing his cash and a box of chocolates.
“I was so grateful that she came back. I could see in her eyes that she appreciated my help, you know when someone sees that you have done something for them. I could see it in her eyes that she really appreciated that I had done something for her,” Mbele said.
But the surprise didn’t end with a single chocolate box.
When Monet shared this tale on her Facebook page, it gained a lot of attention and hundreds of people praised the man. She then made the decision to launch a fundraising effort for him, which was a huge success.
“Since Nkosikho saved my life I would love to do something in return for him,” she wrote on the fundraiser page. “His 2 children, mom and brother lives with him in Khayelitsha and he will really benefit from any donations.”
A whopping $94,000 was raised by the time the fundraising came to a conclusion, which would have covered the gas attendant’s wages for around eight years. Higher-ups in the organization heard about the incident and put him forward for the Regional Service Excellence Award.
Shell further pledged to give $35,000 to the man’s preferred neighborhood charity.
“I’ve seen the good news and wanted to call and congratulate you for the good work you have done,” chairman Hloniphizwe Mtolo told Mbele. “We have decided to respond to what the public has done and donate half a million rand to a charity that you will choose.”
It’s amazing how one small act of kindness can go such a long way!