New Jersey Woman Raises More Than $200K for Homeless Man Who Bought Her Gasoline

A New Jersey woman has raised more than $200,000 for a homeless man in Philadelphia who previously bought her gasoline when she unexpectedly ran out.

Kate McClure, a 27-year-old from New Jersey, told the Inquirer that as she was traveling to Philadelphia to visit a friend, her car suddenly ran out of gasoline. McClure said she was nervous and scared, as the neighborhood where her car stopped was sketchy.

“My heart was beating out of my chest,” McClure said. “I didn’t know what the heck to do.”

After calling her boyfriend, 38-year-old Mark D’Amico, who promised to come get her, McClure said a homeless man named Johnny approached her car to help.

The Inquirer notes:

They learned he is Johnny Bobbitt Jr., 34, from the Raleigh, N.C., area. He was an ammunition technician in the Marines. His Facebook page includes photos and posts that trace a romantic relationship from its happier days to its 2014 breakup.  He studied hard while training to be a paramedic and then worked long shifts, according to his Facebook posts, where a smiling Johnny stands tall in front of a medical rescue helicopter. In August 2014, Johnny posted that he aspired to be a flight nurse.

According to McClure, Johnny — who takes care of two other men under a bridge in the area — told her to lock her car doors and that he would return.

Johnny told her to sit tight and that he would spend his last $20 to buy gas a few blocks away. “He said, ‘I’ll be back. Trust me,'” McClure told the Inquirer.

Ten minutes after speaking with McClure, Johnny returned with a gallon of gas that he had bought with his last $20.

“She called me and said the guy brought her gas,” said D’Amico.

Though McClure and D’Amico continued passing through to see Johnny in Philadelphia, they still felt they could do more. That is when they decided to fundraise to help change Johnny’s life, setting up a GoFundMe page that has far exceeded the $10,000 goal the couple originally set.

Johnny told McClure that he is interested in working at the Robbinsville, New Jersey, Amazon warehouse so he can get health benefits and make a decent living.

“He knows where he’s at and he knows what he has to do to dig himself out,” D’Amico told the Inquirer. “It’s almost impossible to dig himself out if he has nobody and nothing. If we can raise enough money to set him up for a few months, where he doesn’t have to worry about where he’s going to sleep and what he’s going to eat, then he can get a job and go about his life.”