Georgia Woman Gifts Car to Teen Who Walked 7 Miles to Work Every Day

Lavonda Wright raised money to buy a car for a young man who walked seven miles to and from his job after school every day.

Lavonda Wright of Cobb County, Georgia, first encountered a teenager named Jayden Sutton when she saw him walking quickly down the sidewalk on Brownsville Road in Powder Springs. Sutton had a full-time job with a seven mile commute, but couldn’t afford to get a car to make it until he’d saved money from the job.

“When I get out of school around 3:30 I will go straight to work. I walk to work and I work six to eight hours and get off and walk straight home,” Sutton told Fox 11 on Thursday. Sutton typically got home from the return trek around midnight, went to sleep, then got up early the next morning for school and started the process over. “I knew if I had to walk to work every day to get a car that’s what I was going to do,” he said. “If I had to walk home then that’s what I was going to do.”

Her son recognized the teenager as they drove past. “He was walking really fast down the road and my son stopped me and tapped me and said I think that’s Jayden,” Wright remembered. She pulled over and offered to drive Sutton to work that day, but knew even then that she had to do something more.

Wright posted Sutton’s story to social media, setting up a GoFundMe to raise money within the community to find him a car. While the campaign raised $7,000, it wasn’t enough. But Wright contacted Nalley Honda dealership in Union City, and the owner agreed to lower the price of one of their vehicles to fit the money they had.

When she finally presented the life-changing vehicle to Sutton, he was overwhelmed. “I just want to say thank you. A million times. You don’t understand how much,” he said, embracing Wright. “I love her for it. I just want to thank her so much. I don’t know how to say thank you.”

But Wright deferred the credit to God: “We aren’t going to lift my name up, we are going to lift His name up because it’s all about Him,” she said. We are in the middle of the pandemic and so many people are focused on what’s being torn down,” she said. Instead, Wright decided to build something new in the life of a young man: Hope.