When 9-year-old Alabama resident Landon Routzong saw a car with a Florida license plate, he wanted to do something nice for the people inside – assuming they were fleeing from monster storm Hurricane Irma.
Landon and his mother, Tara Paker Routzong, were in the drive thru for the Chick-Fil-A in Troy, Alabama when they saw the car, which was in front of them in line, Routzong wrote on Facebook.
Routzong and Landon had been talking about the upcoming hurricane that day, which is probably why Landon declared he would be paying for their meal.
“But how do you pay for the car in front of you?? You run toward their window with a debit card in hand and scare the mess out of them lol,” Routzong wrote.
Landon took his mother’s debit card and ran up to the man’s window, asking him if he minded if he paid for his meal, Routzong told ABC News. The man then thanked Landon and shook his hand.
The man inside the car told the pair that he had fled his home and Miami and was on his way to stay with family in Birmingham.
“Landon and I both had tears in our eyes from how appreciative he was,” Routzong wrote.
As of Monday, Routzong’s feel-good post garnered more than 2,000 reactions and had been shared several hundred times.
Landon told ABC News just wanted to give the evacuees one less thing to worry about.
“I didn’t want them to waste their money on food because they’re trying to escape the hurricane,” he said. “I felt like I should help out.”
The Chick-fil-A on Highway 231 in Troy saw an increase in customers since local evacuation advisories were issued last week, since it is on the evacuation route from Florida, Chick-fil-A director of operations Savannah Smith told ABC News.
Ellen Degeneres even included Routzong’s post on her website, writing, “This is What good Parenting Looks Like.”
Routzong said she was proud of her son, who is normally shy.
“I often feel like I’m failing because I can’t do it all, all the time and then things like this happen and remind me that I don’t have to,” she wrote on Facebook. “My most important job is going just fine.”
(H/T: ABC News)