Boy asks mom to pack lunches for schoolmate with no money for food

A New Mexico mother gave the internet a true lesson in kindness when reports surfaced that she had been packing lunches for two after her son asked for food for a boy in need. Her story went viral, and she is now urging others to help schools out.

Josette Duran, a volleyball coach from Albuquerque, never thought of making the news, but a wave of unexpected support took her story to the headlines.

It all started with a picture that Duran shared with her friends on Facebook back in September, telling them how proud she was of her 14-year-old son Dylan.

Duran has been packing two lunches instead just one, after Dylan asked her to help a boy at his school.

As weeks passed, Duran received a call from the principal, who wanted to meet her as a mother of the boy she fed learned about her deed. It appeared she lost her job and was unable to pay for her son’s lunches. The woman tried to pay Duran back for feeding her son, she recalled.

“She says, ‘I know this isn’t much, but I just got a job, and I know you’ve been feeding my son,’” Duran explained in a Facebook video posted on October, 14, which has since been deleted.

Duran refused the money. In a recent post on Facebook, she explained that she was doing what “every human being is supposed to do.”

She has even gone further in her support. As she told KCCI, the players on the volleyball team she coaches raised $400 to pay her back. Duran took that money to her son’s school cafeteria and used them to pay off past-due accounts for children in need.

“So now, nobody in that school owes any money,” she said in the video above. “And now everyone can eat.”

Being in need is something Duran herself went through years ago, she told KCCI.

“This hits home to me, because years ago me and my son were homeless. I was living in my car, I was washing him bathrooms, and we did not have food,” she recalled to a reporter.

Overwhelmed by support she received online, Duran has again turned to Facebook sharing a touching message.

“The mounts of support and outpouring love was so overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t think I did anything special.”

She says, since her story broke, she has been getting messages from business, entrepreneurs and even a mayor.

“I just want to tell you, guys, […] don’t give back to me, I don’t need anything. Go to your local elementary school, go a middle school, go to a high school and whatever you want to give to me, give to them,” she said.

After her story went viral, Jerry Fenton from Iowa came back to a school in Burlington he attended as a child with a $700 check to help to pay off overdue lunch bills for children.