A Little Kindness Goes A Long Way

A young couple who were helped out by a homeless man praised his kindness and repaid him with hope for a new life.

Charlotte Ellis says she and boyfriend Taylor Walden were stranded at Covent Garden Tube station when ‘Joey’ offered her his coat and duvet. In return, the pair took him back to her family home in Essex and, after five days, she says he has a job and is off the streets.

“Sometimes, all someone needs is someone to give them a little bit of their time,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “All he needed was someone to have faith in him and to help be that stepping stone to make a difference to someone’s life.”

“Joey is the most amazing, caring and incredible human that we have ever met and I’m so blessed to have been a part of getting him off the streets.”

Ms. Ellis says that on Wednesday, January 4, she and Mr. Walden were waiting for morning services at Covent Garden to resume after missing the last Tube because “in our drunken state we had got confused and had missed the last train”.

Because she looked so cold, Joey asked Ms. Ellis if she wanted to borrow his coat and duvet and they began chatting. “There was just something about him that was so sincere, I couldn’t leave him out there on his own,” she said. “No one deserves to be out in these conditions. I’m not saying that you should trust everyone you meet on a street corner, but who exactly should you trust?”

She refused to leave without him, and the three took a taxi back to Essex, before he slept in her Billericay home. Over the next five days, she, and three other friends, took him for Indian food, “had his hair cut”, gave him a mobile phone, gave him clothes and played Playstation with him.

Ms. Ellis told The Mirror: “We’re absolutely astonished and overwhelmed that my post went viral, all I hope is that people think to give people like Joey a little bit of their time. That’s all I wish for.”