Teen Cleans Up After Protest, Gets Rewarded Big Time

Buffalo high school senior gets car, scholarship to college
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 8, 2020 12:13 AM CDT
Teen Cleans Up After Protest, Gets Rewarded Big Time
Local religious leaders hold a banner as they march through the streets of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sunday, June 7, 2020, in New York.   (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Antonio Gwynn Jr. heard that Bailey Avenue in his town of Buffalo, New York, had glass and trash strewn all over after a Sunday night protest last week. Knowing people would need to be able to access the street to get to work the next morning, the 18-year-old high school senior started cleaning at 2am and kept at it for 10 hours. Eventually, an organized neighborhood group showed up in the morning, planning to tackle the disarray—but Gwynn was already nearly done. The story started picking up traction, and now the teen, who also does community service as a member of Kappa Phi and as a church volunteer, has been rewarded in a few very big ways, CNN reports.

First, Matt Block, who saw on Facebook that Gwynn had been asking for advice on purchasing a car, gave the teen his 2004 red Mustang convertible—the same model and color car that Gwynn's mom, who died in 2018, drove. Then a local businessman gave Gwynn a year of free auto insurance coverage. Then Buffalo's Medaille College offered Gwynn, who originally planned to go to trade school and save up money for college, a full scholarship. Now Gwynn will be studying business and mechanics there starting in the fall, with the aim of one day starting his own auto repair shop, he tells WKBW. "I always wanted to be someone to help everyone with their car problems. This is a great opportunity I have right in front of me." (More uplifting news stories.)

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