She Helped a Stranger Buy Medicine. Then Strangers Gave Her More Than $68,000
When 86-year-old Connie Platero of the Navajo Nation helped a stranger buy medicine at an Arizona Walmart, his thank-you of $500 grew into a GoFundMe that raised more than $68,000 for her family.
Human StoriesGNGV Editorial Team3 min read
Connie Platero, an 86-year-old grandmother originally from Klagetoh on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, was at a Walmart in Tempe when a stranger approached and asked if she could help him buy medicine. Without hesitation, she did. “I’ve been there, so I know how it is, and I feel for them,” she later explained—a small kindness offered out of plain empathy.
The stranger was Jimmy Darts, a social media creator known for repaying acts of generosity. Moved by how readily Platero had helped, he handed her $500 as a thank-you and asked about her life. She told him her dream was simply to have enough food on the table and to keep up with her rent of about $1,000 a month, all while dealing with a broken-down car.
Darts started a GoFundMe to help her, and the response was extraordinary. Within a short time, thousands of people had contributed more than $68,000 toward car repairs, bills and medical costs. Platero, who had been staying with family in the Phoenix Valley while attending medical appointments, said she planned to use the gifts to buy a truck—one that would help her family haul water and firewood once she returned home to the reservation.
The story is a neat circle of generosity: an elderly woman who gave what she could to a stranger, and a wave of strangers who gave back many times over. For Platero, the practical help was real and immediate. But the larger gift was the affirmation that the kindness she instinctively offered was not lost on the world—it came back to her, multiplied, from people she would never meet.
