“Guardian angel” drives strangers in need; asks for nothing in return

An internet post that brought strangers together reminds people how much good there is in the world.

Lyn Story is a retiree from Fort Worth, Texas. The 64-year-old had plenty of time on her hands until she met Apryl Goodwin, 46, who had been diagnosed with uterine cancer.

“I had no transportation and I didn’t know what to do,” Goodwin said. She found help on the community app Nextdoor.

“Someone spoke up and said to me, ‘I’ll take you to your appointments,’ and I kind of ignored him because he’s a stranger. What do you do? So she texted me again and said, ‘I’m taking you. I mean it. I’m honest. I, you know, I’m sincere.'”

This stranger was Story, and over the past year, she took Goodwin to more than 25 radiation appointments, six chemotherapy treatments and countless doctor visits.

“One time her car broke down and she went to call someone in the middle of traffic to take me to my chemo,” Goodwin said.

The cuteness of the story doesn’t end there. A few months after meeting Goodwin, she was on the Nextdoor app again when she noticed a message from Kevin Horrigan, who is legally blind.

“Lyn is like a little angel,” Horrigan said. “She really is, because I can’t drive.”

Hard times pushed Horrigan out of retirement. Now Story is lightening his burdens.

“Lyn drives me to work or she picks me up from work. It helps me a lot, a lot,” he said.

Story said she began to think of herself as a “bad weather friend.”

“You know, fair-weather friends are only there when things are going well for you,” she said. “But a bad weather friend is there to help you when needed.”

They were strangers just a year ago and have now developed a life-changing friendship.

“The best way for me to feel good is to help other people feel good, just to make it easier for them,” Story said.

For Story, it’s her story that helped shape who she is today: She was arrested for shoplifting 45 years ago.

“I learned how to stop it, how to get better. I went to therapy and kind of figured out why I felt the need to shoplift and that helped me. And then several years later Late, I was finally diagnosed as bipolar.” And it helped me because I took medication to make me even instead of up and down. And so that made a big difference,” she said.

Determined to get better, Story was 31 when she donated her healthy bone marrow to a seriously ill patient she didn’t even know. It is therefore not surprising that when he was recently asked to welcome a dog named Sully, disabled with three legs, she was eager to register.

Filled with love, Story’s own story changes the lives of many people.

“She’s my guardian angel,” Goodwin said.