It all started when Ron Lynch, a mail carrier in Sandy, Utah, spotted a boy sifting through ads and newsletters in a junk mail bin. The boy, 12-year-old Mathew Flores, asked Lynch if he could spare any junk mail because he was looking for reading material; Lynch suggested the library, but the child said his family had no car and he couldn't afford the bus fare. Moved, Lynch snapped a photo and posted a story about the boy's plight on Facebook last Thursday. "You should have seen him beam when I said I could help!" reads the post. "He's counting on me, so I'm counting on you!" The Internet stepped up to the plate: Though the Huffington Post notes that Lynch thought his post might lead to the donation of 50 or 60 books, people from around the world have sent hundreds of books to the somewhat shell-shocked Mathew.
"At 12 years old, he didn't want electronics, he didn't want to sit in front of the TV playing games all day, the kid just wanted to read," says Lynch, who adds that his own mother instilled in him a love of reading at a very young age. Now he's explained to Mathew that he might get thousands of books, and Matthew says he promises to read every one, and then to share them with other children. "They said, 'These books are for you,'" Mathew tells the Deseret News. "I thought they were mistaken, but they were for me. I'm just so happy." As for the deliveries, Lynch had this to say on Facebook yesterday, "He had about 7 packages today! 6 yesterday, [and] I expect to be crushed with mail tomorrow." Want to participate? Send to: Mathew Flores, C/O Sandy Post Office, 8850 S 700 E, Sandy, Utah 84070. (Check out how this mail carrier saved a man's life last week.)
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