My Facebook Post Went Viral in 2020. Six Years Later, I Still Read the Messages When I’m Feeling Down.
What unexpected online attention taught me about generosity, praise, and the lasting power of strangers’ kindness.
Sometimes, when I'm feeling down about myself, I return to messages strangers sent me in March 2020. There are thousands of them. Some are simple notes of encouragement. Others are heartfelt reflections on kindness, humanity, and how people ought to treat one another. A surprising number say generous things about my character that I still find difficult to accept.
I never set out to become the subject of those messages. I was trying to help an elderly man find toilet paper.
One afternoon in Green Bay
On March 13, 2020, I encountered Peter at a CVS in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was using a walker and had spent much of the day looking for toilet paper for himself and his wife, Alice, who was sick and waiting in their car with oxygen equipment. The store didn't have any. He looked exhausted and discouraged.
I offered to search for him. After visiting four stores over roughly an hour, I found two packages and arranged to deliver them. I later helped with groceries. That evening, I wrote about the encounter on Facebook, hoping people would remember those who had a harder time obtaining basic necessities as the COVID-19 crisis intensified.
I didn't anticipate that my post would spread so widely. I didn't anticipate the press coverage. And I certainly didn't anticipate the number of people who would decide to help Alice and Peter.
A phone overwhelmed by kindness
For nearly a week, the notifications and messages were so relentless that my phone was practically unusable. I eventually acquired a second phone so I could keep up with social media without losing the ability to use a phone for everything else.
The experience was bewildering. The post had been written for a personal audience; suddenly people far beyond my community were reading it. Love What Matters published my account on March 17, 2020, Newsner covered it the following day, and Spotlight Stories published another account in April.
A story that had started in a pharmacy was being shared far beyond Green Bay. Many people told me how much they needed to hear something hopeful at that moment. The pandemic was bringing fear, isolation, and uncertainty. Perhaps an account of a stranger helping another stranger gave people something reassuring to hold onto.
But there was a difference between people appreciating what happened and people deciding that it made me exceptional. The latter was much harder for me to understand.
Why the praise made me uncomfortable
I appreciated the messages. I was grateful for the warmth and generosity behind them. But I didn't believe that what I had done was heroic. Peter needed help; I could help him; I did.
Sometimes the compliments seemed to describe a person more impressive than the one I know myself to be. A single decision, however kind, cannot capture an entire person's character. It doesn't erase the mistakes we make or the ordinary ways we fall short. I didn't want to mistake the internet's response to one moment for a complete judgment about my life.
Over time, I began to see that the praise might have been as much about what people wanted the story to represent as about me. They wanted reassurance that ordinary compassion still existed. They wanted to believe that people would look after one another when things became frightening. I could understand that, even while feeling uncomfortable standing at the center of it.
The kindness moved beyond the screen
People didn't just comment and share. They asked how to send help to Alice and Peter. I established a post office box in Green Bay and began collecting money, paper products, soap, baby wipes, bottled water, feminine hygiene products, and other supplies.
Between 2020 and 2024, more than 5,000 individual donations came through the effort. Some were monetary. Many were packages of everyday essentials. During the first year especially, the post office sometimes called to tell me the box was full.
I'd collect the gifts, contact Alice and Peter, and arrange a visit. We'd spend an hour or two together, opening packages, reading messages, or simply enjoying one another's company. Sometimes I'd help with mail, a meal, an errand, or a prescription. The donations brought us together repeatedly, but the visits became something more personal.
I called Alice and Peter my older friends. Over approximately four years, I visited them an estimated 15 to 20 times. The relationship endured after the post was no longer new and after the public attention had moved on.
Reading the messages took years
I wanted to read what people had written. There was simply so much of it. The correspondence accumulated faster than I could work through it, and I spent months returning to messages and comments.
By sometime in 2022, I believed I had read virtually everything that had been sent up to that point. New messages have continued to arrive, and the original Facebook post still gets shared.
What remains remarkable to me isn't merely the volume. It's that people who didn't know me took time to write something thoughtful. The internet can be cruel and divisive, but I witnessed an extraordinary example of people using it to encourage one another and offer practical help.
That experience changed the way I think about what a viral story can mean. It isn't only an attention event. In the right circumstances, it can connect people who otherwise would never have crossed paths and prompt them to do something generous.
What happened when the attention moved on
Alice and Peter continued to be part of my life. As time passed, Peter spoke less during visits, though we communicated by text between them and by smiles, gestures, and hand squeezes when we were together. During the final months of his life, he and Alice lived in the same nursing home in Green Bay.
The last time I saw Peter, he was bedridden but alert. He recognized me and responded to me even without words. He died in 2023 at age 86, a few weeks later. I attended his funeral and contributed $10,000 to his memorial fund.
After his death, I organized a GoFundMe to help Alice and visited her twice more. I shared meals with her and checked on how she was doing. She died in 2024 at age 87. I attended her funeral and contributed $10,000 to her memorial fund, for a combined $20,000 in personal memorial contributions.
Those years are the part of the story most people never saw. The original Facebook post may have introduced us to one another, but the friendship became important on its own terms.
Why I still return to the messages
There are days when I struggle with how I feel about myself. On those days, I sometimes revisit the words people wrote six years ago. I don't do it because I think those strangers proved I was extraordinary. I still believe I did what anyone should have done.
I do it because the messages are reminders of something larger: people can be remarkably kind, even to someone they have never met. They can take time to encourage another person. They can contribute to the well-being of two strangers. They can turn an ordinary act into a sustained collective effort.
I can feel uncomfortable with the praise and still appreciate the sincerity behind it. I can believe my original decision was ordinary and recognize that what followed was extraordinary.
When I think about the post now, I think of the people who wrote to me, the thousands who donated, and the two friends I was lucky to know. The attention was temporary. The kindness had consequences that lasted for years.
And sometimes, when I need reminding that there is good in the world, I open those messages again.