One day a guy saw an elderly old lady, stuck on the side of the highway, but even in the dim light of day, he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in back of her Lexus and got out. His old beat up Ford was still sputtering when he approached her.  Even though he approached her with a smile on his face, she was worried. No one had stopped to help for the last two hours or so. Was he going to rap her? He didn’t look safe; he looked homeless and hungry. He could see that she was frightened out of her mind, standing out there on the side of the highway in the middle of December. He could see the fear in her eyes and knew how she felt. It was those chills which only fear can put in you. He said, “I’m just here to help you, that's why I stopped because you
need my help lady, not here to hurt you, only here to help I promise.” “ Please go wait in the car where it’s warm.!  By the way, my name is Carlos Almaraz.”  Well , this shouldn't take long all she had was a flat tire, but for an older women, that was scary enough. Carlos bent down to look  under the car  for a place to put the jack, scratching and bleeding up his knuckles two or three times. Eventually he was able to get the tire off to change it. But he had to get on the wet muddy cold ground getting his clothes dirty and his hands hurt.  As he was finishing up, he was tightening up the lug nuts, and she rolled down the window just a little bit just enough to be able to  talk to him. Her story was she had told him that she was from Minneapolis and was  just on her way home, so she was just passing through. She thanked him no less than a half a dozen times for stopping and helping her out.

Carlos just smirked as he closed the trunk. She asked how much she owed him. Any amount  would have been all right with her. She had gone through  all the horrible things that could have taken place if he had not been so kind and had not stopped. Carlos never expected to be paid for just merely doing a good deed. This was not a job to him. It was just doing the right thing and helping someone in need, and God knows there are many people in need of a helping hand from a kind stranger, there has been many who had given him a helping hand in the past. He had always been that kind of person his whole life and always wanted to keep it that way, and it never occurred to him to act any other way.
He let the old lady know that if she really wanted to pay him back, the very next time she came across a person or family who needed help, she wouldn't think twice and  give that person or family the help they needed, and Carlos finished by saying, “And when you decide it's the right time to pay it forward please remember me.”
He stood on the side of the highway and patiently waited until she started her car and slowly drove off. It had been a very bitter cold and sad depressing day, but his heart  felt good as he hurried for home, disappearing into the dusk.
A couple miles down the highway the old lady came across a small old diner. She pulled into the parking lot and decided to go in to grab something to eat, and get out of the cold and relax before she made the last 200 miles of her trip home. It was a very old dingy looking restaurant. The whole place was new  to her, and not what she is accustomed to. The very young blonde waitress welcomed here right away and  she even grabbed a warm clean towel to dry her wet curly hair. She had a very sweet but crooked smile, one that in a million years you couldn't forget. The old lady did discover the waitress was very easily eight to nine  months pregnant, but she never let that slow her or even the aches and pains she must be having change her attitude. The old lady could tell the waitress had very little but it amazed her how she who had so little could be so happy with always having a smile for a stranger. Then all she could remember was Carlos.
After she finished her dinner, she gave the waitress a hundred dollar bill to pay for her tab. The young lady hurried and went to get the old ladies change for her hundred dollar bill, but when the young waitress returned back to the table to give the old lady her change, she was nowhere in sight and had clearly slipped right out the door. She was gone just like that. The waitress questioned where the heck she disappeared to, it was like she vanished into thin air. At that moment the waitress noticed that there was something written on the napkin that was sitting on the table.
Her eyes filled with tears when she got done reading what the old lady had kindly written: “Please don’t worry you don't owe me a thing.  Like so many I have been where you are. I was lucky to have a kind stranger once help me out, and now I am helping you the way they helped me. If you feel guilty and feel like you really need to pay me back, here is how you do it, do not let kindness of strangers lending a helping hand end with you. Please pay it forward” Under the napkin with the note on it were six more $100 bills.
Well, there was still lots to get down and many people to serve, but the young pregnant waitress made it through another day of standing on her feet all day.  All she wanted to do was go home and put her swollen feet up. That evening when she arrived to her little run down apartment she climbed into bed, all she would think about was the little old lady and how kind and generous she had been.  She kept going over and over in her head what was written on the napkin and the money...Lord only knows how much her and her husband needed it.  Especially with the baby coming in less than a month. She knew how worried her husband was, and as he lay sleeping next to her, she kissed her husband on the cheek and whispered soft and low, “We are going to be alright, I know it.  I love you, Carlos Almaraz.”