16-year-old Chauncy Jones Black is doing all the right things. He’s a straight-A student, he stays out of trouble and he does his best to take care of his disabled mother. But still, Chauncy is just a teenager in high school and there is only so much he can do by himself.
So he decided to take a bus trip to the “rich people’s Kroger,” and ask people if he could help them load groceries inside their vehicles in exchange for some food. He wasn’t having much luck, but that all changed when he asked Matt White.
“He approached me while I was shopping for produce asking if he could help me carry my grocery bags to my car in exchange for buying him a pack of glazed donuts,” White wrote on his Facebook page. But White took one look at Chauncy and could tell he needed more than just a pack of donuts.
White went through the entire store with the Memphis teen and got him “about a week’s worth of groceries” as they talked about his life back at home with his disabled mother.
By the time they were done shopping, Chauncy had missed the bus back home, so White offered to drive him back.
“He missed the bus, so I drove him back to his house and I saw what he and his mom lived in, and just how much the groceries meant to them. Then I went home and posted on Facebook.”
And that post on Facebook went viral. The original posting has more than 25,000 likes and it encouraged White to start a GoFundMe page for Chauncy and his mother. In less than two weeks, nearly 9,000 people shared the page and the total raised jumped to over $100,000.
The total today? $279,421.
White is still shocked by all the support, and he told ABC News that he doesn’t deserve the credit. The community in Memphis does.
“The focus of this is not me and what I did, because I really didn’t do anything. I just captured a story and put it online but our community, Memphis, picked up this family and put them on a platform.”
With the money raised, Chauncy and his mother were able to move into a new house, and we’re sure their kitchen is fully stocked now.
Chauncy plans to start a lawnmowing business this summer while he’s out of school. We know he’ll be successful.
Featured image: Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal
