Elton Hood and Tracy Eckhardt of New Windsor, Illinois, are the kind of people who would drop everything to help another person – even a stranger.
In July, the couple stopped to fill their tank at a gas station in Woodhull. There, Elton began chatting with an elderly man who seemed confused. As it turned out, he had spent the last week driving and was desperately lost. Luckily, his new friends were more than happy to set him on the right path!
The driver, an 80-year-old man named Dennis, was traveling from Arizona to Wisconsin to visit his son, whom he hadn’t seen in 19 years. But he struggled with the directions, getting lost multiple times and frequently driving the wrong way for hours.
Determined to get him back on track, Elton wrote out careful new directions and gave Dennis his phone number, just in case.
Elton even programmed the directions into Dennis’ GPS, confident they wouldn’t lead him astray.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Dennis to get lost again. The couple received a call shortly after parting ways with him, and they immediately agreed to take a three-hour road trip to Wisconsin so Dennis could follow them in his truck!
Along the way, they stopped, ate lunch, and listened to Dennis’ stories. Tracy and Elton quickly grew attached to the octogenarian, whom they would have never gotten to know if it hadn’t been for Elton’s kindness!
Wanting to remind her fiancé of how wonderful he is, Tracy documented their entire journey on TikTok. The sweet video has since gone viral, touching thousands of hearts around the globe!
“I wanted to capture a lot of it so I could make that and show him how it looks to the outside world,” Tracy explained. “How everybody else sees it when you do things like this. And how inspiring it can be to other people.”
Thanks to them, Dennis arrived safely in Madison, where he reunited with his son.
As if all this wasn’t heartwarming enough, Tracy and Elton then offered to lead Dennis back to Arizona when his trip ended!
“We started this and we feel like we need to see it through,” Elton said. “So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make sure Dennis makes it to Arizona in one piece.”
Elton isn’t the only one with a heart of gold! Both he and Tracy went above and beyond to help a stranger in need, and Dennis will never forget their kindness!
See them in action in the video below, and share this story to inspire more good deeds.
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