Three days after a stranger saw kids swimming in a truck bed, he suddenly turned up on their doorstep. Summer in San Antonio, Texas, is hot. From June through September, the average high temperature reached is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, locals take advantage of any opportunity to cool down, even if their methods are a bit unconventional.
For one Lone Star family
That meant transforming their red pickup truck’s bed into a pool for their kids. In the summer of 2016, they laid a tarp down so that the water wouldn’t flood out of the cracks in the bed. They looped a rope through the TARP’s edges and through the truck’s hubcaps, too, to keep the pool in place. Now, back to the story, then they innocently filled their makeshift pool with water, undoubtedly delighting the small children who splashed around in the pickup truck’s bed.
Sure, it wasn’t the most beautiful neighborhood pool that Texas had ever seen. But in the summer’s heat, no one seemed to be complaining. Perhaps that’s why the day a man showed up on the family’s doorstep came as a complete surprise. He didn’t know them, but he had seen the children playing in their pool, and this stranger had something unexpected that he wanted to give them. It’s unclear whether the family knew that their inventive playspace had become an Internet sensation by the time this man came knocking.
But someone else
Not the stranger on their doorstep, had seen their kiddos splashing around in the pickup. That person had then snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook, and the person who posted the photo did so not to laud the creative parents behind the contraption, nor did they do it to reveal the fact that the kids can find joy in the simplest things. Only in the west. Will you see some shit like this? They wrote, adding a few laughing emoticons to set the negative mood.
With that, the image did the rounds. More and more people saw the photo and added their own insults to the original post. By the time Todd Ardondo happened to see the image on his feed, it was laden with negativity that broke his heart. People were writing things like Way to Teach your Kids to be poor. Arrendondo told US Weekly.
He also told Today that the Facebook post was ripe with demoralizing messages. One called the pictured family lazy. Another said they were raising kids to love being poor. He carried on to US Weekly. I didn’t see anyone say, hey, look at this mother.
Look at this family trying to keep their kids cool
Despite this situation, the post literally brought tears to my eyes. Arredondo admitted to Today. It was also in that heartwrenching moment that he knew he had to do something to change the narrative surrounding his family. Arredondo started where his story began.
Facebook, he hoped that he could use the social media site to track down the pictured family. He wrote a post of his own on June 14, 2016. If anyone knows this family or where this is, let me know. I guess the original poster posted this to make fun of them, but I see it differently. I see a mother having some fun with her kids, also a mother interacting with her kids, he went on.
I can’t say that for three, four of the mothers I know. I applaud her with almost 100 likes and 60 shares. It only took him one day to find out who they were and where they lived. He needed to reach out to the children’s mother for this information because he didn’t plan to send his positive vibes digitally. He had a gift he wanted to deliver to them himself.
Arredondo, who owns a jewelry business in his native San Antonio, took money out of his own pocket in order to fund what he wanted to do next, he went to the store, bought a brand new inflatable pool for the family, and took it round to their house. He told US Weekly just how wonderful it felt to knock on the family’s door and give them the pool. The kids were so happy and wanted to help fill it with air, he said. The parents wholeheartedly expressed their appreciation and thankfulness.
They’re very, very humble people
But for some reason, Armando did not feel as though he had completely answered his call to help families in the San Antonio area with this one good deed. Instead, he decided to use this moment to kickstart his own charitable project called Pools for Kids. He set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for his simple campaign to provide pools to families like the one he helped families who otherwise would not be able to afford such a fun and cooling activity for their kids. He reached out to Facebook friends again to see if they knew anyone else who might want a free pool for their family.
Within one week, he had raised more than $200 for pools sprinklers and slipping slides.
They were all for families whose leases barred them from setting up a full-on pool
He even reached out to local amusement parks for their help in making day trips more affordable for these families. As of the summer of 2017, Ardondo’s GoFundMe page has raised more than 20 $0, and his story has made national headlines. In his most recent update to the Pool for Kids funding page, he said he has gifted more than 200 swimming pools thanks to the donations he received. He has also helped send more than twelve families to the nearby water park, as we should come to expect from Ardondo, though, he was not content to stop there either.
In the same post, he said, he planned to drive all the way from Texas to California. Where he would be delivering between 102 hundred more pools to children. There, too.
One can only imagine how rewarding his journey has been and will continue to be. You’ve been waiting for me. For what pool? This pool. Oh, yeah.
Here you go. Careful. It’s heavy, he told us weekly that some of the kids he helped plan to pay it forward by building their own lemonade stand. They said we want to help raise money to buy a pool for another family, he recounted. And that’s what this journey is all about.