On Sunday morning, Jan. 17, my wife and I along with our 7- and 11-year-old sons drove from our hotel in Wells to stores and restaurants in Sanford during a long weekend away. After breakfast at the Cockpit Cafe, we noticed our tire was almost fully flat while in the Walmart parking lot. Growing up in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, and away from home, I’ve had little past experience in tire and auto repair and was a bit concerned as were my family members. We used what little tire pressure we had remaining to taxi over to the Sunoco station where we hoped they had a tire inflator machine. In the cold and rain of that morning, my 7-year-old and I proceeded to pump air into the flat while my wife and 11-year-old stood by. Within a minute, a nice man approached my wife and introduced himself as a mechanic and offered to help. Due to the tire damage, he recommended that we install our spare tire and proceeded to do so for us. He then sent us to VIP Tire (that happened to be open on Sunday) for the full fix. This man accepted no compensation as a token of our appreciation and we got no name, just a hand shake and a smile. After he left, my wife and I felt like we had been visited by our guardian angel! We remember his kindness and wanted to express our appreciation to the mechanic who helped us out-of-towners on his day off.

Steven and Andrea Letourneau, Joshua, age 11

and Zachary, age 7, Millbury, Massachusetts