A woman was able to help a partially disabled airport worker retire after she witnessed him hobbling across the tarmac on a flight out of Los Angeles.
Heartbroken watching him limp up to the plane she was sitting on, she captured a video of the man for her TikTok account and posted it with a caption asking if anyone knew who he was.
The footage went viral, and soon, a fundraiser did to.
James Blair is a Navy veteran, working in the military between 1980 and 1990 before reentering civilian life as a fuel mechanic. Since 2006 he’s worked at John Wayne Airport despite hardly being able to walk from a pair of deteriorated knees.
Having recently turned 64, and therefore not far from social security and presumably a military pension, he cannot retire as his income helps support his elderly mother’s hospice care.
Knowing none of this, Thackery proceeded to watch as comments piled up asking her how someone might be able to help the poor man, until finally a commentor identified him as Blair, at which point she was able to get in touch with him, having neither a smartphone nor social media accounts, through his boss at John Wayne Airport.
The boss volunteered to drive some 90 minutes to Blair’s house and help him set up a GoFundMe that Thackery would be able to share to the millions of viewers of the video on TikTok.
@boymom692 Does anyone know this man at the John Wayne Airport? Watching him work so hard, he could barely move, barely walk truly broke my heart. I know there has to be a way we can help him retire. 😭🩷 #findhim #viral #delta #retirement #empath ♬ original sound - Keegan
At publishing time it channeled $180,000 from over 6,000 donations to a sole beneficiary fund set up for Blair’s benefit.
“I was speechless because I felt like the world showed up,” Thackery told KSL News, “and I think in these times we need people like that.”
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Blair said he wouldn’t have ever believed such a thing were possible, and that the unexpected blessing from a distant-seated stranger has done nothing less than restore his faith in the divine.
“I believed in God, but I didn’t really believe in God. But now, with the angel sitting next to you, it’s amazing,” Blair told Thackeray as reported by KSL. “I have a hard time working to pay bills, so other people probably have the same problems. When they’re giving money they really can’t spare, that amazes me. I’m just blown away.”
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“The Angel” is a moniker that has stuck, as not long after the two strangers sat down, and Thackery was able to shake Blair’s hand, then fill it with a check worth $174,000, he sent her a bouquet of flowers addressed to the very same.
Blair hasn’t retired just yet, but he has used some of the cash to buy a new bed.
WATCH the story below from KSL…
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