Yvonne Brooks stood outside her house, jiggling the handle of the door. She couldn’t get it open, despite having the keys in her hand. It was stuck.
She texted her son Jared, an elementary school teacher, for help. He responded but couldn’t come just yet – he was still in class.
She eventually got inside, but the experience stuck with her son – stressed out and trapped in a classroom - while his mom stood outside her own house, locked out.
Yvonne is battling breast cancer, so one extra stressor wasn’t fair to her, he thought.
Jared made a little wish to the WUSA9 team – that someone help his mom repair her door so she would never be stuck outside again. He was pretty sure someone had tried to break in and broke the handle.
“The front door says so much about a home, you know,” Luke Mitchell, a contractor from Top Dog Home Pro, said. He was enlisted by the Little Wishes team to help Yvonne out.
“So to come home everyday and be welcomed by a missing handle, and having to struggle with injuries where you can’t even access your own home, I just can’t even imagine how difficult that would be,” he said.
As Luke and Jordan Smith from Lowe’s Home Improvement gathered their teams outside Yvonne’s home, the Little Wishes team went inside to surprise her.
When WUSA9’s Leslie Foster walked down the steps into the living room, Yvonne gasped.
“I’m so shocked!” she exclaimed. “Oh my goodness. I don’t know what to do. I’m about to cry.”
The team quickly got to work replacing Yvonne’s door as she explained her situation.
“Through my journey, I’ve been through a lot of things. I was a widow at a very young age … and so we’ve been through a lot,” she said. “But this young man [her son, Jared] has stood by me.”
Jared, of course, had made the little wish for his mom.
“I wrote about my mom because she has been going through a lot,” he said.
“He takes great care of me,” Yvonne added. “I am a blessed woman.”
Smith – from the Lowe's team – said volunteering was an easy choice for them.
“Simple gestures like this can mean a world of a difference to anybody,” he said. “And as far as my time goes, any opportunity or the chance to help someone out, I could be in the same situation and I would want someone to think about me in the same regard.”
Little did Yvonne know, there was another surprise on the way.
She had actually also made a little wish. She asked for a treadmill she could walk on inside her home.
So after they fixed the door, they brought in the second surprise.
“I’m so excited!” Yvonne said, her eyes filling with water as she laid her hand on her heart. She said she had not been able to make it to her gym for exercise during the winter.
“I hadn’t been going because it’s honestly just too cold,” she said.
The teams that helped install the door and treadmill said they were just happy to be able to do their part.
“Here I am, giving up my time, which doesn’t really mean anything to me, but means everything to her,” Jordan said. “We are, we’re still people. We’re no matter … you can go through something and you’ll need someone’s help. And if you can offer someone that ability to help out, then just do it.”
About Impact: Little Wishes – Sometimes it’s the littlest things that have the biggest Impact. Our WUSA9 journalists put “wish” jars around town and asked people online, “What’s your little wish?”
Then we connected neighbors with neighbors to help make those dreams come true. If you have a little wish or would like to help us grant a little wish, please email impact@wusa9.com.