Repo Man Pays Off Elderly Couple's Car, Doesn't Stop There

'It was a miracle come true'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 26, 2016 2:14 PM CST
Rare Repo Man With a Heart Is Elderly Couple's Hero
Jim Ford, repo man with a heart, couldn't bring himself to take this elderly Illinois couple's car. So he did something pretty amazing.   (GoFundMe)

"I may be getting soft in my old age," Jim Ford tells the Belleville News-Democrat. The Illinois repo man showed up at the house of Stanford Kipping, 82, and his wife Patty, 70, at 1am to repossess their 1998 Buick for the bank but couldn't bring himself to bother the elderly couple at that hour, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. He met with them to explain the situation the next day. Ford found out the Kippings were broke and sinking into debt thanks to rising medication costs. They only had $30 to get them through until their next Social Security check. Nevertheless, the Kippings understood Ford had a job to do and appreciated his concern. “[Stanford] is like, ‘Oh Jim, you’ve been so good to us, if I ever win the lottery, I’m going to split it with you,'” Ford tells the Washington Post. “And I’m like, aw man. Really? This is getting worse rapidly."

Ford took their car, but it ate at him. "They are a real nice elderly couple," he tells the News-Democrat. "I can't just take their car." He and a friend ended up starting a GoFundMe page to pay off the Kippings' car and raised $3,500 in one night. Not only did they pay off the car, but they had $1,000 left over for the Kippings. Ford delivered the cash, the repaired and detailed Buick, and a Thanksgiving turkey to the Kippings. “It was a miracle come true," Patty says. "We didn’t know what we were going to do." “Never heard of any good act of kindness like that from a repo man,” the couple's daughter adds to the Post-Dispatch. But Ford remains modest: "I was just glad I could help somebody out," he tells the Post. (More uplifting news stories.)

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