A 26-year-old homeless man gained more than 200 job offers on Saturday after he took to the streets of Silicon Valley handing out resumes instead of begging for money.
David Casarez, a 26-year-old web developer, had been standing on the median of a highway in Mountain View, California, on Friday dressed in a suit and carrying a handmade cardboard sign—but instead of begging for money, he was begging for a chance at success.
“HOMELESS. HUNGRY 4 SUCCESS. TAKE A RESUME,” his sign read.
KRON reported that Casarez graduated from Texas A&M University in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems and worked for General Motors in Texas before striking out on his own in September 2017 to pursue his dream of building a startup in Silicon Valley.
The young entrepreneur’s fortune quickly faded in June, when he ran out of money and was forced to live out of his car. Things got worse for Casarez when his vehicle got repossessed, leaving him no choice but to sleep on a park bench.
Eventually, passing motorist Jasmine Scofield took notice of Casarez’s sign and asked to take a photo. Casarez agreed, and Scofield posted the photo on Twitter.
“Today I saw this young homeless man asking for people to take a resume rather than asking for money,” Scofield tweeted on Friday. “Please RT so we can help David out!”
Scofield’s tweet went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of hits over the weekend. By Saturday afternoon, Casarez said he had more than 200 job offers from small startups to big companies like Google.
“Google reached out to me,” Casarez told the New York Post. “So many other companies. Pandora. A bunch of startups.”
Casarez’s story is continuing to capture the hearts and minds of people across America and around the world. Scofield’s post racked up 116,000 retweets and 185,000 likes as of Sunday afternoon.