He Mowed Her Yard Then Asked The Internet For Help. $625,000 Arrived In Three Days
Spencer, the Wichita, Kansas, lawn care creator behind SB Mowing and its 13 million TikTok followers, has done it again. This time the story belongs to a woman named Debbie, who was introduced to Spencer's audience through a YouTube video posted last Friday, and who in the hours and days that followed received more support from strangers than most people see in a lifetime. An Uber driver named Zach had picked Debbie up from the store, helped carry her groceries to the back door, and noticed how much she was struggling. He had recently had surgery and could not help her on his own, so he reached out to Spencer. What Spencer found when he arrived was a property overtaken by years of overgrowth and a woman quietly carrying an almost unbearable accumulation of loss: her husband had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given 90 days to live, she had become his full-time caregiver until his death, her own health had since been declining, a contractor had taken a $2,000 deposit for tree work and never returned, a neighbor had wrecked her car and not paid for it, and when Spencer arrived she had not eaten in days and was behind on rent.
Spencer and his father spent two days clearing the property, hauling multiple trailer loads of debris, and buying everything Debbie had set aside for a yard sale so she would have money in her hands immediately without the burden of running the sale herself. The items were donated to Habitat for Humanity. Three months of back rent were covered through Spencer's nonprofit, SB Mow It Forward. Then Spencer launched a GoFundMe to help Debbie with dental care, medical expenses, daily essentials, and eventually a transition to a senior living community when she is ready. Within five hours it had raised $150,000. By the end of three days it had raised $625,000. Debbie has had one of the hardest stretches of life imaginable and she has been carrying most of it alone, Spencer wrote on the campaign page. It is the kind of sentence the internet tends to respond to, and once again it did.
