Gym Manager's Sweet Act Of Kindness For Man With Down Syndrome Goes Instantly Viral

Mar 18, 2019 by apost team

We’ve all had one of those days when everything seems to just be stacked against the concept of having a good day. Who hasn’t spilled their coffee down the front of their shirt on a day they didn’t have time to go home and change? Who hasn’t hit a major traffic jam on the day of a big meeting? Everyone has those days when you just want to throw up your hands and climb back under the blankets with a good movie for the remainder of the day.

Lisa Simpson was having one of those days recently. It seems that everything that could possibly go wrong was inevitably going wrong. Lisa works as a caretaker for Christopher Wagner Jr. 22-year-old Christopher has Down syndrome and he and Lisa work closely to help Christopher live the best life possible.

The two do a variety of daily activities together, many of them focused on simply enjoying life and others focused on health and exercise.

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One of Christopher’s favorite activities is enjoying a workout at his local Planet Fitness. Lisa drives him to the gym each time. On Feb.8 things began to go wrong in several consecutive ways, according to The Providence Journal. Lisa noticed en route to Planet Fitness that her vehicle was very low on gas, KMBC reported

She pulled into a nearby gas station to fill up. However, she soon realized that her gas cap was frozen solid and unable to be opened. After working to unfreeze the gas cap, she then realized that she had accidentally picked up the wrong bag when she left the house, leaving her with no wallet.

After Lisa and Christopher finally made it to the gym, Lisa realized that Christopher wasn’t wearing his exercise shoes. He was wearing boots that would make his usual workout team basically impossible to complete. Lisa said she simply put her head in her hands because she just didn’t know what to do. She had no wallet so she couldn’t buy Christopher shoes to wear for the day, and she had a frozen gas cap so she was unable to make the round-trip to go back and get his shoes.

“I put my head in my hands, and I’m just like, … ‘Now what am I going to do?’ Because I know I can’t go buy him shoes because I don’t have any money,” Simpson told WPRI-TV.

“And I can’t go all the way to Burrillville and back because my gas cap is frozen. I was just like, … ‘What else is going to happen today?’”

Lisa was about to give up when the Planet Fitness manager, Daniel Cote, stepped in and did something truly incredible. Without a second thought, he got Christopher’s shoe size and rushed out to get him some proper footwear. He even got down on the floor to help Christopher put the new shoes on. As a young man, Cote had experienced a hard upbringing and knew what it was like to suffer.

“I ended up under foster families and group homes, more group homes though because even with foster families I argued, I acted out,” he told WPRI-TV.

Needless to say, both Christopher and Lisa’s day turned around thanks to the generosity of a kind-hearted stranger. How heartwarming is this story? How do you feel about the power of one simple heartfelt gesture? Let us know what you think about how this day turned around!