A random Facebook request for old tapes leads to this Feel Good Friday surprise

EastIdahoNews.com and Ashley in Idaho Falls and Pocatello are partnering to honor people in our community for Feel Good Friday. Every week, we surprise someone deserving of special recognition.

Several months ago we received an email about a man named Michael. It said:

I met Michael when he posted several classified ads in Facebook groups asking if anyone had old reel-to-reel tapes. I didn’t respond, in fact it seems nobody responded for a few months so he asked again. I don’t know why I even noticed the posts. I guess there was just something genuine about his requests. One day I happened across some tapes in a thrift store so I grabbed them. I found his old posts and asked through messenger if he was interested.

He actually lived on one of the routes I take to my offices, so I arranged to stop by his house to drop them off. A neighbor came out and told me Michael would be back in a few minutes because someone’s car wouldn’t start and Michael drove him so he wouldn’t be late for work. This was interesting because Michael hadn’t been able to meet me earlier when he said he had to take a friend to the food bank. Hmmm. I asked the neighbor if Michael was regularly driving neighbors around.

“Oh yeah. Well, as long as he has some gas.”

Michael did show up soon. He was pretty excited and said the tapes were great and he could give me a few dollars for them. I couldn’t possibly take the money, so I told him to save it for gas.

It was one of the best random nice things I’ve ever done.

It took us a while but we were finally able to track down Michael and give him another random surprise for Feel Good Friday! Check it out in the video player above.