Colton Franklin was glad to see his friends again in class after a hard year during the pandemic.
The 6-year-old boy in Cypress, Texas, took the bus to school on his first day back for the second year in a row. On his way home, everything was going well until he got off at the wrong stop.
Colton’s older brother, Gavin, was told to pick him up at the bus stop.
When Colton didn’t show up at the bus stop on time, Gavin told their mother right away.
“Gavin calls me and tells me, ‘Mom, Colton didn’t get off the bus.'” And I’m like, oh, shoot,” Arlene Lightfoot-Franklin said on KHOU 11.
Arlene thought Gavin was late to the bus stop and that the bus driver would take her son back to campus.
When Arlene called the school, she was told that her son, who was in first grade, was on the bus.
“And he is going home. I say, “Well, he’s not home.” He never left the bus. We asked the bus driver about him, and she told us that he wasn’t on the bus. She told me to talk to the Transportation department.
As time went on, she got more and more worried and upset. Arlene and Gavin jumped in the car out of fear for the worst. They drove around the Cypress Miramesa neighborhood.
“He’s not here. The school has no idea. Arlene said, “The Transportation doesn’t know.” “So we just drove around trying to find him. I had no idea where I was headed. I just knew I would go to school that way.”
Colton, meanwhile, got off the bus in a place he didn’t know and had no idea how to get home.
By pure chance, a woman named Kim was driving by with her kids when she saw Colton running quickly down West Road.
As soon as she saw Colton, she knew that if her kids were ever in Colton’s situation, she would want someone to help them.
Kim wrote on Facebook, “I got out of my car and asked him what was going on.” “He was so brave to tell me that he had been dropped off at the wrong stop and had no idea where he was.”
“I thought it must be in that area. He had a green sticker on his shirt, which I saw. There was no phone number on it, but it did have his address. I put the house’s address into my phone so I could figure out how to get there, but it turned out to be. Kim wrote on her Facebook that we were 5 miles away from where we were.
Kim and her kids talked Colton into going home with them. As they got closer, Colton started to remember where he was.
Coltons guardian angel led him to his front door and rang their Ring doorbell, which sent a message to Arlene’s phone.
When Arlene got the message from Ring, she was on the phone with the School District’s Transportation Department. Since she was on the phone, she couldn’t talk to the woman or her son through the doorbell camera. She hurried home, where she saw her son again.
Arlene told KHOU 11: “There’s nothing we can do to repay her.” “Like, she could have kept going. She could have kept doing what she was doing. But she stopped to help a little boy who was in trouble. Even more so in the way things are right now. Everything about coronavirus. She took the time and risked letting a stranger meet her family. She hugged me even though she knew I was a stranger. That just shows that there are still kind people in the world who care about each other. All we want to do is thank her. I’m not sure what we can do, but I want to thank her in writing.”
Arlene put the Ring video on the Nextdoor page for the Miramesa neighborhood.
She hoped that the people around her would help her find the woman she calls an angel.
“Praise God. I praise God. When I prayed that night, I couldn’t say anything else but “thank you, God.” “That’s all I could say because my life and the lives of my family could have turned out so differently,” Lightfoot-Franklin said.
Social media didn’t take long to do its magic and bring the two parents together.
The same week, on Friday, her daughter’s kindergarten teacher showed her a picture and asked, “Is this Kim?” “Yes, that’s me,” Kim said in response. The teacher told her to look at Arlene’s post on the Next Door app to try to find her.
“Guys, I started crying again because what she said was so kind and appreciative. It meant a lot to me.” Kim wrote about how she felt on Facebook.
“We are now friends on Facebook, and I hope to keep seeing Colton grow up and become the best person he can be!!! Colton, dream big and change the world. I will be your biggest fan!” Kim put something on Facebook.
The bus company said sorry for the mistake, and Colton’s trip to and from school the next day went well.
Even better, these two families will now be friends for the rest of their lives. What a great place to live!
The family’s Ring camera caught the sweet moment. You can watch it below.