Teenage Boys Praised for Helping Fallen Elderly Man When They Thought No One Was Watching

A group of teenage boys in Idaho have gone viral after they aided an elderly man who was in need of a helping hand.

According to KTVB, teenagers Victor Ornelas, Isaac Hernandez, Diego Ramirez, Devan Ornelas and Josh Sorg were driving to a basketball court near their home in Caldwell last month when they came across Jose Gomez, an elderly man who had fallen after having trouble with his walker.

“We parked and we all ran out,” Hernandez told the news station. “We picked him up and we asked if he was okay. He said he was fine.”

Though Gomez said he wasn’t injured, the boys decided to stay and walk him home. Once there, they helped him clean the scrapes he suffered during the fall.

“We just kept walking with him,” Hernandez shared. “We said we were going to walk him all the way to his house. We helped him inside, and his knee was bleeding. So, we grabbed napkins, put alcohol on it and cleaned him up.”

Gomez said the deed made him feel special.

“I was just falling down I don’t know what happened,” he told KTVB. “They picked me up. I was walking just right and then sadly I went down, and they come up and say, ‘Hey, want us to take you home?’ And I said, ‘Okay, let’s go.’ It made me feel good.”

But as the boys banded together to help Gomez, they had no idea that, just down the street, neighbor Erika Tovar was watching their kind act and documenting it for social media.

“Shout out to these young boys for helping an elderly man off the ground after he fell and walking him home,” Tovar wrote in a Facebook post from March 26. “If any of you have [an] elderly family check on them make sure they are okay!”

The post received over a thousand likes and went viral around town, and it soon reached Kathy Plaisance, the owner of The Sweet Spot Bakery, who invited the boys over to have cupcakes and cookies with the words “Hometown Heroes” written on them. Other businesses pitched in gift cards, lunches and free haircuts to thank them for their kindness, KTVB reported.

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The boys, meanwhile, said it was no question they would help Gomez. They care about their city, after all.

“[It’s] crazy how it blew up,” Hernandez told the station. “We didn’t do it for the attention, we just did it out of the kindness of our hearts. It’s just the right thing to do.”