Photo Of Youth Helping Senior Down Escalator Is Restoring Faith In Humanity

The image was originally posted online by Paula Piccard. The photo was taken at the Holyoke Shopping Mall of Ingleside, Massachusetts, and has since been shared across social media. But what’s in this photo is restoring faith in humanity.

According to Good News Network, Paula was waiting at the top of an escalator when she noticed an apprehensive elderly man standing at the top of the electric staircase. While others were getting impatient over the senior’s hesitance at using the escalator, young Alonzo Johnson asked how he could help the senior. The 23-year-old didn’t know the older man, but he knew he could help.

“The older man was paused at the top of an escalator and a few people started gathering, waiting to get on,” wrote Paula on Facebook. “It was clear he was feeling unsure and this young man offered the simplest kindness: an outreached arm and a ‘can I help you on, sir?’”

The older man explained that he had once gotten caught on a moving escalator, and that incident left him with an everlasting phobia of the moving stairs. Without hesitating, however, Alonzo said that he would ride with him all the way to the bottom.

Paula then snapped a photo of the heartwarming duo riding the escalator arm-in-arm and posted it on social media.

This one small gesture of compassion probably made all the difference in the world to the slightly scared man.

But it was Paula’s final message that should resonate with all of us as well.

In about an hour, the evening news will air and we’ll be reminded of division, race wars, political mud-slinging, shootings and other heartaches. But today, violence, race, age, politics and other social lines were blurred and one person simply helped another. I wanted to hug both of them. Whoever this young man is, YOUR FAMILY RAISED YOU RIGHT! THANK YOU! So, please look for the silver linings – as I was so fortunate to witness this evening.

She signed off her post using a heart. Compassion is in all of us, and this simple act of kindness which evolved into a social media post is restoring our faith in humanity.