Just two days after James Robertson -- a 56-year-old Michigan factory worker who walks 21 miles round trip to get to work each day – made headlines, a GoFundMe page in his honor had raised more than $200,000.
Robertson began his daily ritual after his 1988 Honda Accord broke down more than a decade ago.
After reading a story from the Detroit Free Press about Robertson’s brutal, 6-hour trek and inability to afford a new car, 19-year-old Wayne State University student Evan Leedy stepped up to the plate.
“What he walks is like me walking to work every day and I honestly couldn’t believe that,” Leedy told ABC News. “I thought to myself, ‘What would I do if my car broke down?,’ and I thought, ‘I have my parents and I have money to get an Uber.’”
Impressed by Robertson's incredible work ethic, Leedy launched the funding site on Sunday, with a somewhat modest goal in mind.
“I initially set the goal for $5,000 just to get him something, bus fares and taxi rides,” Leedy said, according to ABC News. “I went to go get ready and an hour later we had $2,000 donated already.
He continued, “I bumped it up to $10,000 and within four hours we had over $10,000,” Leedy said. Then, he bumped it up to $30,000.
By Tuesday afternoon, the GoFundMe page racked up almost $240,000, and donations showed no signs of stopping. Leedy said that both Honda and a local Chevrolet dealership have even offered to donate a car to Robertson.
“All the attention and donations are coming as a shock to Robertson, according to his friend and sometimes driver, Blake Pollock,” ABC News reports. “Pollock, a vice president of wealth management at UBS, started seeing Robertson walking on his daily commute a few years ago. When Robertson cut through the parking lot of Pollock’s office building one day two years ago, the banker stopped him.”
Source wrote: