Kind Heart Enriches a Poor Soul With the Gift of Hope

In a world plagued by sad stories with empty endings, here’s a sweet one to savor.

It’s a familiar plot line--one’s person kindness toward another--but the texture of the two main figures, both somewhat reluctant players as far as publicity goes, gives this one a richness that will play long into the night.

You may remember one of them--Jesse Cole, whose body ends at his waistline and who was the subject of this column one day in August after a compassionate Garden Grove couple said they had seen him perched on a skateboard and soliciting donations on a street corner.

I found a man of 33, angry that he was asking for handouts on the corner and depressed over a series of blows that he’d been dealt. Interestingly, I thought, none of his complaints centered around his missing legs and deformed right hand, both birth defects.

What angered Cole were the day-to-day indignities that, he admitted, were stripping him of his will. “The thing that bothers me now is that I’ve gotten this negative attitude because I’m not being man enough to get above this,” he said on the corner that hot day in August. “Usually, when something bad happens, I find a way to overcome it. But lately there’s been no victories.”

While we talked, he said what he needed most was a van--something that could double as transportation and a home.

Over the next few weeks, many readers telephoned about helping Cole. A few sent money, including one $100 check from a man who attached one of the more poignant letters I’ve read in a while.

About that same time, probably late August, The Lady called.

She was obviously elderly and said she hadn’t been able to sleep since reading about Jesse Cole. She wanted to make a donation large enough to make a difference for him.

I didn’t try to dissuade her, but the amount made me nervous. She wanted to remain anonymous and wanted me to handle the transaction. I didn’t want to handle it and preferred getting a third party. I didn’t call her back for a while, thinking she might change her mind. She never did.

Things dragged out until last week.

With Peggy Hall, a representative of the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled, going with me, I met The Lady in her Leisure World home near Laguna Hills. It was a richly decorated, ornate apartment and she an elegant woman of 89. It is a life light-years from that of Jesse Cole on his street-corner skateboard.

Over lunch, The Lady gave me a cashier’s check for $10,000 to give to Cole.

A couple hours later, I handed it to Jesse in a doughnut shop in Santa Ana.

“Does this say what I think it says?” he asked, looking at the amount.

He popped off the chair and motored around on the floor in his own version of a legless victory dance. “This just knocks my feet out from under me, if you know what I mean,” he said.

“God is good,” said L.E. Rose, a professional housecleaner and longtime friend Jesse had brought with him.

“Is there any way I can meet the woman, to say thank you?” he asked.

I said no, but that she hoped only that he would use the money for a van.

That’s pretty much the story, except for the epilogue.

I talked to each of them Friday--Jesse the rough-hewn guy who’s been knocked around his entire life, and The Lady, financially set but who has also known her share of life’s blows, including bouts with cancer, tuberculosis, hepatitis and her current heart condition.

“How did he react to it?” she asked. I told her he loved it.

Why did you do it, I asked.

“I had the money, and I was poor when I was young,” she said. “I know what it is to be without money. It’s money I was going to leave to the University of Iowa, and they won’t miss it.”

She asked if I thought he’d buy a van. I said I thought he would.

“I feel good,” she said. “It’s off my mind now. I don’t have to worry about him while I lie awake in bed with my beautiful husband and think about him being out in the cold.”

As for Jesse Cole, the full impact of The Lady’s gift still hadn’t sunk in, although it had been a couple days. When I telephoned Friday, he was going through 18 pages that he’d torn out of an auto trader magazine.

“It don’t seem real,” he said. “‘What could she possibly see in me that could cause her heart to turn over like that?”

He said he put the money in a bank account and has been checking the ads for a used van. He already has specially fitted controls that enable him to drive.

“I went in and deposited it, and people at the bank looked at me like they couldn’t believe it, because my account is always zero, zero, zero,” he said. Although acknowledging that “it’s hard for me to get out of depression,” he promised that he won’t blow the money. “I guarantee you it’s going to be spent wisely. I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to rush out and throw it down the drain. I’d like for people to know that when I did get blessed (with the woman’s donation) that I didn’t go back out on the corner, that the money was used right. I don’t have to work the corner no more, and that just thrills my world.”

He asked me about the mystery woman whose life and his met at this totally improbable intersection in time.

Frustrated that he’ll never know her, he said, “I don’t know how to thank her, anyway.” I tried to persuade him that she doesn’t want thanks.

“I’ve had so many things that went bad,” Cole said. “This is the first good thing in a long time. How can I explain myself in saying that I can’t grasp it, because I’m not used to good things happening.”