Random Acts Of Kindness Day Is Every Day For These Neighbors

ACROSS AMERICA — One of the best things to do on Random Acts of Kindness Day — or any day — is this: Be kind to one another. Patch readers agree.

“What’s the nicest thing a neighbor has done for you?” Patch asked you on Facebook.

You gave us a glimpse into what makes a few blocks of houses a neighborhood.

Compassion for one another was a theme repeated across our network of more than 1,000 local Patch sites.

Plainfield, Illinois, Patch reader Kristin Abs Whisnant never got a chance to thank the Hispanic family living next door for the kindness they showed after the April 2020 death of their 18-year-old daughter to COVID-19. They’d exchanged smiles and waved to one another, but as for knowing one another, they were strangers.

“Late one night after dark, our doorbell rang,” Whisnant wrote on Facebook. “My husband opened the door to see candles on our front porch, a poster sharing their condolences that was signed by the family members.

“As my husband looked up, all of the family members were standing on the sidewalk in a row with light candles in their hands looking back at him.”

The family moved soon after.

“I never got to express to them how touching and meaningful it was to us. …,” she wrote. “If you are reading this dear neighbors, I want to say thank you and I will never forget what you did for us.”

She Hit His Car; He Apologized

And, mercy, kind neighbors can be generous, with their words and in their actions.

Patchogue, New York, Patch reader Amy Crystal had a stressful day that she expected to become more exacting when she accidentally backed into her neighbor’s car and smashed the front grille. His response left her flabbergasted.

Not only was her neighbor unconcerned, “he apologized to me for having a bad day” and paid to have the damage repaired himself, Crystal wrote on Facebook. “I tried to give him my number over and over again so I could pay for the damages. He said don’t worry about it, I know where you live and hasn’t said a thing.”

Jeff Balogh of Toms River, New Jersey, accidentally sliced his hand open and needed surgery to regain use of his fingers. He didn’t have health insurance at the time, and his neighbor extended, without being asked, an interest-free loan Balogh could pay back as he was able.

“He got his money back in full when I was working again,” Balogh wrote.

Warminster, Pennsylvania, Patch reader Eileen Scheid-Kustafik and her family were already grieving her grandmother’s death when her neighbor extended kindness she will never forget. Their dog was dying while she and her family attended her grandmother’s out-of-state memorial service, “our neighbor … helped keep our dog alive until we got home from the airport to see her off.”

Neighbors Battle Fires, Bats

Braintree, Massachusetts, Patch reader Crystal Evans owes her life and her house to her neighbor Michelle. They said “hi” as they passed on the street but didn’t know each other’s names.

Evans’ IV pump exploded last March, setting fire to her ventilator and wheelchair on fire. The entire neighborhood responded in one way or another, but Michelle rushed in, climbed over the burning wheelchair and found Evans’ fire extinguishers. With her bare hands, she threw burning equipment outside and extinguished the fire on her own.

“If it wasn’t for Michelle’s quick actions,” the fire would have spread to other medical equipment and all “would have exploded before the fire department had time to arrive,” Evans wrote.

It wasn’t as serious of an emergency that brought a father-and-son team to the Waukesha, Wisconsin, home of Patch reader Amy Bossert Lopez. But neither was it something to be laissez-faire about. Her husband was out of town, and the duo rushed “to rescue me from an injured bat that got into our house.”

Small Kindnesses Matter

Good neighbors are kind, period. Whether there’s an emergency or not.

Rochester-Rochester Hills, Michigan, Patch reader Juli Brown Owczarek’s neighbor took a big responsibility off her hands in the first few weeks after her baby was born via cesarean section. She’d come over daily to walk the dogs.

“I don’t want to interrupt or see the baby, just leave the leashes by the back door, and I’ll take them and bring them back,” the neighbor said, Owczarek recalled on Facebook. “It was a wonderful, thoughtful gift and took a chore off our list. And the dogs were so much calmer around the baby after the walk, too.”

“My amazing neighbor Christine knew I didn't have a green thumb,” wrote a Middleton, New Jersey, Patch reader who goes by Jennifer Anne on Facebook. “I envied her garden. I came home from work and found her planting hostas in my little garden.”

She regularly watered the plants and kept them alive. The roots of friendship went deeper than the plants.

“She was not just my neighbor, she was my friend,” the reader wrote. “We lost her last year. I miss her. A lot. Every time I see the spot where they are planted I say thank you for being my friend.”

Often, people “neighbor” with no expectation of recognition.

To this day, Temecula, California, Patch reader Kathy Valez doesn’t know which neighbor to thank for the Instacart deliveries of essentials that showed up at her door when she and her family were sick with COVID-19.

And simple gestures matter.

Erika Lucchese, a Middleton, New Jersey, Patch reader, recalled with love the time her neighbor Olga “sent her son dressed up as Santa to our house Christmas Day.”

It’s become a daily routine for Susan Mounce to deliver Farmingdale, New York, Patch reader Louie Greco’s newspaper to his stoop, as well as take his garbage pail from the curb to the house.

Big Moments Count, Too

But so, too, do big moments matter.

“How do you begin to thank a neighbor who has gone out of his way for 8 months to help you and never wanted anything in return?” Enfield, Connecticut, Patch reader Karen Thibodeau McGuire asks.

She asks because her neighbor was the engineer who kept her family’s train on the tracks after their routine was derailed by a serious car crash last May. She was badly injured and in rehab, and her husband wasn’t cleared to drive for six months after suffering a medical emergency that caused the accident.

“Our neighbor has been driving him back and forth to work so he could keep his job. He has taken us to doctor appointments and would check in on me all the time,” McGuire wrote. “He mowed the lawn this summer until my husband could do it. There have been a ton of little things he did, like the large pot of fall flowers he put in my front garden.”

Again, how does McGuire begin to say “thank you”?

Amy Crystal, the Patchogue, New York, woman whose neighbor apologized to her because she had a lousy day, even though she backed into his car, has an idea:

“Definitely going to do something nice for him,” she wrote.

Here are what some other neighbors have to say:

• Kind Neighbor Stories From Perry Hall, Maryland
• Kind Neighbor Stories From Bel Air, Maryland
• Kind Neighbor Stories from New Lenox, Illinois

Find Your Patch

Patch is in more than 1,000 communities across America. Find your community and see what's happening outside your front door.