This Man Walks 21 Miles to Work Every Day and Now Others Have Chipped in to Give Him a Big Surprise [Video]

This is a wonderful story! You can do wonders on the Internet. James Robertson has walked 21 miles to work every day for the last 10 years since his car quit running. He only makes $10.55 an hour working in Detroit and can’t afford a new car. He doesn’t complain, even though he only gets about two hours of sleep a night and you can see how it hurts his feet and the rest of him as he walks. He’s 56. 19 year-old Evan Leedy decided to help James and he set up a GoFundMe account with his phone. He thought he might raise 5k, but now he has raised over $50,000 and two car dealerships are offering to donate cars to James. People are good – you just have to give them a chance. When someone is in need and not self-serving, people step up and go beyond what anyone could have thought of to help one another. Without the government I might add.


James Robertson walks 21 miles each day getting to and from work in Detroit because
bus routes don’t cover the distance. Crowdfunding campaigns have raised more than $50,000
towards getting him a car. (Image via Detroit Free Press)

From the Huffington Post:

It takes James Robertson eight hours to make the 46-mile commute to and from work. He walks 21 of those miles every day.

Robertson, 56, is an injection molder at Schain Mold & Engineering, a plastic-parts manufacturer located in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He lives in Detroit, and for the last decade, after his 1988 Honda Accord quit on him, he has had to rely on limited public transportation, occasional rides from others and his own two feet to make the daily trek, the Detroit Free Press reported. He is unable to afford the cost of buying and maintaining a car earning just $10.55 an hour, and he hasn’t moved closer to work because his girlfriend inherited the house where they live.

Robertson leaves around 8 a.m. to arrive at work ahead of his 2 p.m. shift, which ends at 10 p.m. He catches the last bus toward Detroit at 1 a.m. and doesn’t get home until 4 a.m., the outlet reports. He says a prayer that he arrives home safe each night, walking through the dangerous area along 8 Mile. Despite all this, he still manages to have a pristine attendance record and doesn’t complain.

“I can’t imagine not working,” he said.

After the Detroit Free Press published Robertson’s story, thousands responded on Facebook, asking how they could help. Evan Leedy, a student at Detroit’s Wayne State University, decided to set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for Robertson to buy a car.

Leedy told The Huffington Post in a phone call Monday he was inspired by Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton, who raised more than $1 million to send schoolkids from a crime-stricken neighborhood in Brooklyn on a trip to Harvard.

Initially, Leedy said, he didn’t even think anyone would donate. So he set the goal at a modest $5,000. In just one day, however, donations soared to nearly $50,000.

“This is obviously more than just a car now,” he told HuffPost. “It can turn into something way bigger than that. Maybe he could use this money to move out and move somewhere else … We’ve had a Chevy dealership as well as Honda corporate [reach out]. Both want to donate a car to him. So he can use this money for whatever else he needs.”

James Robertson is a hard working man… a man who simply wants to earn an honest living. He didn’t ask for charity. He didn’t whine to others that he had to walk an incomprehensible distance every day on two hours sleep just to earn a few dollars. He didn’t cry foul that he wasn’t paid enough or that he was in pain. Instead, he does what so many other Americans do… he works his butt off and is the best he can be. Now, other Americans have given to him because he inspired all of us. A good deed for a good man.

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton is an editor and writer for Right Wing News. She owns and blogs at NoisyRoom.net. She is a Constitutional Conservative and NoisyRoom focuses on political and national issues of interest to the American public. Terresa is the editor at Trevor Loudon's site, New Zeal - trevorloudon.com. She also does research at KeyWiki.org. You can email Terresa here. NoisyRoom can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.

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