Wonderful!
A 19-year-old U.S. soldier was able to come home for the first time since Christmas when a total stranger bought him a plane ticket for Memorial Day weekend.
Keaton Tilson, a U.S. Army mechanic stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, waited in the Dallas airport for two days, hoping to fly on standby after getting last-minute leave to come home.
Time wasted away and Tilson’s chances at seeing his loved ones in the St. Louis area got slimmer. Then Josh Rainey from St. Louis County intervened.
Rainey offered his ticket to Tilson, but the airline refused to let him transfer it. He started to walk away, but then turned around and bought the soldier his own ticket.
“Got discouraged. Apologized. He thanked me. I walked away, and I called my wife, which I would do in a situation like that to kind of ask for her advice, and we agreed both that it was the right thing to do to go back and buy the ticket,” Rainey said.
The young soldier asked his benefactor if he could hug him afterwards. Both men fought back tears, Rainey said.