Kind stranger leaves note and gift on Hurricane Florence evacuee's car: 'Florida is praying for you and your state'
Ashleigh Gilleland was seeking safety when she left South Carolina for Florida last week. But she also encountered the kindness of strangers.
Gilleland, 21, lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., but she evacuated Wednesday to avoid Hurricane Florence, which has resulted in 24 deaths so far and has brought 20-plus inches of rain. “Once we heard about the hurricane, we contemplated evacuating for about three days,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “It wasn’t until Wednesday that we decided to make the trip to Florida.”
She drove to Sarasota with her fiancé, David Greer, and they arrived in the middle of the night. “Our roommate had already gone up to Sarasota to spend time with his family so we decided to go up there as well,” she says. “Some of our friends followed us as well, so there was a total of six of us.” Gilleland, who is pregnant with a baby boy, and Greer holed up in a hotel to wait out the storm.
During their time in Sarasota, they ate at a Wings N Weenies restaurant. Upon leaving the restaurant, Gilleland noticed a note on her car.
“As soon as I got out of the car, I checked to see how my parking was, because I’ve known people to leave notes on people’s cars who didn’t park very well,” she recalls. “My parking was fine. When I grabbed the note, I felt something hard inside. It felt like a card of some sort.” It was a Walmart gift card and some cash. “When I opened it, I saw the money and the card and automatically knew it was because of us being evacuees,” Gilleland says. “I was overwhelmed.”
The note was from a kind and concerned stranger.
“Saw your license plate is from South Carolina. Not sure if you evacuated from the storm, but just know Florida is praying for you and your state,” someone name Chelsey wrote. Chelsey explained that she had found a similar note on her car when she went to Alabama to avoid Hurricane Irma almost a year ago.
Gilleland posted photos of the note and gift on Facebook, and people are loving this sweet story; her post has received more than 4,000 reactions and shares.
A good Samaritan herself, Gilleland automatically started thinking about how she, too, could pay it forward. “I’m going to pay it forward once I get home because I know of all the devastation that has happened there over the past week. Myrtle Beach needs some positivity,” she says.
She and Greer are now on their way back to Myrtle Beach. “I’m not really sure about the condition of our home just yet, but I’m hoping for the best,” she says. “We live in a first-floor apartment, and our complex is known to flood. So fingers crossed we don’t have any issues.”
Gilleland is grateful that the story has spread. “I really just hope all of this will eventually reach Chelsey so that I can thank her in person,” she says. “The smallest gestures can make the biggest impacts on people’s lives.”
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