I’ll never forget the moment I saw my friend’s number pop up on my screen—and the confusion that followed. It was their phone, but not them on the line. Instead, an unfamiliar voice answered.
He introduced himself as Mark Woolfe from Smiling Times. He said he’d found the phone—along with some personal items—lying abandoned on a nearby bench. My immediate reaction? Relief mixed with gratitude. At least the phone was in safe hands, and I offered my thanks.
But then Mark paused—and what he said next stopped me cold.
“This is my home. I sleep here at the bus stop.”
In that awkward silence that followed, I realized: this stranger lived right where he’d found the phone. Instead of packing it away in his own safe home, he was returning it from wherever he could call home that night—on a bench near a bus stop.
His voice was matter-of-fact; there was no self-pity, no begging for praise. Just a quiet, unembellished honesty that hit me harder than any overt act of kindness.
I told him, “Mark… keep the phone. My friend can pick it up from you later.” But he demurred, insisting that returning it was the right thing to do. Despite his circumstances, despite having nothing himself.
There, in that short conversation, I felt a surge of perspective. It’s so easy to surround ourselves with cynicism, to expect generosity only from those with comfort to spare. Yet here was Mark, with so much less by conventional standards—and yet he gave so much more in character.
It made me rethink how we define kindness. That night, Mark wasn’t just returning a phone—he was giving me a reminder of humanity. Of empathy and grace in unexpected places.
I don’t know Mark’s story or how he ended up on that bench. But that brief contact—mere minutes on a borrowed line—left me changed. People like Mark deserve more than a moment of recognition. They deserve to challenge what we consider normal, to ask us quietly: what can we do next?