After Woman’s Car Breaks Down, Teens Push It 4 Miles to Get Her Home

(TMU) — Three Ontario teens are earning significant praise online after they selflessly interrupted their evening to help push a total stranger’s broken car about 7 kilometers (or around 4.3 miles) down the highway at four in the morning last week.

The teenage boys—Aeron McQuillin, 18, Bailey Campbell, 17, and Billy Tarbett, 15—had just finished swimming last Wednesday and were headed to a Tim Horton’s café before they noticed a smoking car on the highway at around 1 a.m.

The teens didn’t hesitate before pulling over to help the motorist, believing they could possibly fix the car. The boys had grown up fixing automobiles with their fathers and believed that it was simply the right thing to do.

Tarbett told CBC:

“We didn’t have anything else to do and we really wanted to help her.”

However, they quickly realized that the woman’s car was “completely done,” and that starting the motor could cause greater damage to the engine.

And not only was the car thoroughly scorched, but the woman who owned the car was visibly upset and said that she couldn’t afford to have the car towed to her home in Welland, which was a few miles away.

That’s when 15-year-old Tarbett told his pals:

“I said, are you guys ready to push?”

So the trio of teens, still clad in their swimsuits and holding their water bottles, pushed the Chevy Cobalt up hill for over two hours to the Merrittville Highway.

As the woman steered and the boys pushed the car, the boys joked and sang along while their Bluetooth speaker pumped out jams by 21 Savage, Afroman, Drake, Juice Wrld and David Wilcox.

Tarbett said:

“We weren’t really thinking of how far it’d be. We were just jamming out.” 

Soon another stranger, Dan Morrison of Niagara Falls, decided to pitch in by driving behind the trio with his flashers on to keep the boys safe.

Morrison, who was amazed by the boys’ kindness, remarked:

“I’d never met these kids in my life.

Dad mode went into effect and I just wanted to make sure these kids were safe.”

By four in the morning, the kids’ mission was done and the car had safely arrived at the woman’s driveway.

The teens would do it again in a heartbeat. Tarbett explained:

“We were always raised to help, no matter what the situation was … We were helping her but also she was helping us, doing a workout.”

The oldest of the three, Aeron McQuillin, said that the workout wasn’t easy, noting that “our calves were absolutely burning.” Tarbett, however, swears that “nothing was sore” the next morning.

He later told the Niagara Falls Review:

“We were at the right place at the right time, and this is one of those stories that we can look back on in 10 years and say it was one of those crazy things we did, but it was all worth it.

We definitely got some gains from it, that’s for sure.”

Once Dan Morrison posted about it on social media with a photo of the boys, their rescue operation quickly went viral.

People immediately began offering to buy the kids a meal or Tim Horton’s gift cards, offers that the boys have declined.

McQuillin explained:

“We really appreciate it, but we didn’t do this to get free handouts.

If I was broken down on the side of the road, I would love for someone to stop and help out.”

And Morrison, who is raising two kids of his own, simply sees the story as a reminder that in a world filled with examples of negativity, “There’s good kids out there.”

By Elias Marat | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com