Community Honors Man Who Walks Over 5 Hours, 17 Miles Round Trip With Fundraiser

A good Samaritan in Oklahoma has stepped in to help a man whose 17-mile round-trip walk to work takes over five hours.

Recently, Donte Franklin, 20, was making the long journey to his job as a cook at Buffalo Wild Wings in Moore when Antonio Jaramillo pulled over.

“He asked if I needed and ride, and I was like, ‘Yeah,’” Franklin told Oklahoma City’s KOCO-TV.

After learning about Franklin’s story, Jaramillo set up a GoFundMe to help him buy a vehicle “so he can get back and forth to work and wherever else he needs to go without walking and also to start his future.”

“He’s a great guy always helping out with his community,” Jaramillo wrote on the fundraising site, adding that Franklin “deserves this very much.”

Franklin, who is also studying to become a welder, told KOCO-TV he’s found inspiration to always keep going thanks to his mother, who passed away when he was 16.

“I had to be positive,” he explained. “I had to grind to make a better me, to make my momma happy.”

And now Franklin has a new source of encouragement.

“It makes me want to keep grinding so I can help other people like they are helping me," Franklin said of the fundraiser. “I just got to keep going, keep going. It's all going to pay off in the end.”