After a hard year during the pandemic, Colton Franklin was excited to see his friends in the classroom again.
For the second year in a row and on his first day back, the 6-year-old rode the bus to school in Cypress, Texas. Everything was going smoothly until he got off at the wrong stop on his way home.
Gavin, the older brother, was assigned the task of picking up Colton at the bus stop.
Gavin immediately informed their mother when Colton did not arrive at the bus stop as planned.
“Gavin calls me and says, ‘Mom, Colton didn’t get off the bus.’ And I’m like, oh, shoot,” Arlene Lightfoot-Franklin said on KHOU 11.
Arlene assumed Gavin had been late to the bus stop and that the bus driver would take her son back to campus.
When Arlene called the school, she was assured that her first-grade son had boarded the bus.
“And he’s on his way home. And I’m like, well, he’s not home. He didn’t get off the bus. And we talked to the bus driver, and she said he wasn’t on the bus. She told me to go ahead and talk to Transportation.”
As the minutes ticked by, she became more and more worried and upset. Fearing the worst scenario, Arlene and Gavin jumped on the car and began driving around Cypress Miramesa neighborhood.
“Where is he? The school doesn’t know. The Transportation doesn’t know,” Arlene said. “So we were just riding around, looking for him. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I would take the route to the school.”
Meanwhile, Colton had exited the bus in an unfamiliar location and had no idea how to get home.
By a stroke of fate, a stranger named Kim, with her kids, was driving by when she noticed Colton running frantically down West Road.
As soon as she saw Colton, she knew she would want someone to assist her children if they ever found themselves in Colton’s situation.
“I got out of my car and asked him what happened,” Kim shared on Facebook. “He was so very brave and told me he was dropped off at the wrong stop and he didn’t know where he was.”
“I thought it had to be right around there. I noticed, he had a green sticker on his shirt. It didn’t have a phone number but it had his address. I put the address in my phone so I could find how to get to this house, come to find out, it was .5 miles away from where we were,” Kim wrote on her Facebook.
Kim and her children convinced Colton to accept a ride home, and as they approached, Colton began to recognize his surroundings again.
Colton began directing Kim where to turn.
Coltons guardian Angel led him to his front door and rang their Ring doorbell, which triggered a notification for Arlene’s phone.
Arlene was on the phone with the School District’s Transportation Department at the time she received the notification from Ring, so she wasn’t able to speak to the woman or her son through the doorbell camera. She raced home where she was reunited with her son.
“There’s nothing that we can do to repay her,” Arlene told KHOU 11. “Like, she didn’t have to stop. She could’ve gone on about her day. But she took the time to notice a little boy in trouble. Especially in this climate that we’re going through. Coronavirus. Everything. She took the time and risked her family being exposed to a stranger. She gave me a hug, knowing I’m a stranger. That just shows that there are people still out there and compassionate that care about one another. We just want to thank her. I don’t know what we can do, but I just want to formally thank her.”
Arlene uploaded the Ring video to the Miramesa neighborhood’s Nextdoor page.
She hoped that neighbors would assist her in locating the woman she refers to as an angel.
“Thank God. I praise God. And that night when I was saying a prayer, I couldn’t say anything but thank you, God. That’s all I could say because it could have ended in such a different way for me and my family,” Lightfoot-Franklin said.
It didn’t take long for social media to work its magic and bring the two parents together.
Friday on that same week, her daughter’s kindergarten teacher reached out to her showing a picture and asked if it was Kim. “I was like, yes, that’s me,” Kim replied. The teacher directed her to Arlene’s post to try and find her on the Next Door app.
“Guys, the tears started flowing again, her words were so kind and appreciative, they meant so much to me.” Kim emotionally shared on Facebook.
“We are now friends on Facebook and I hope to continue to watch Colton grow up and be the best person he can be!!! Dream big, Colton, and change the world. I will be a cheerleader for you!!!” Kim wrote on her Facebook.
The bus company apologized for the mistake, and Colton had a successful journey to school and back the next day.
Even better, these two families will now be lifelong friends. What a great community!
The touching moment was caught on the family’s Ring camera – watch it below.
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