The honestly of homeless Kansas man Billy Ray has fired the imagination
of overseas homeowners and those
touched by the story of Bill Ray. More than 6000 people from all over the world
have made small donations as a thanyou for reminding us that good values can still be maintained even when you are down and out.
Just a few weeks ago Mr Harris
was homeless, spending his nights beneath a bridge and his days in a square in
Kansas City, asking passers-by for change.
Then a young woman accidentally dropped a
diamond engagement ring into his coffee cup.
Mr Harris returned the ring to its
distraught owner when she came back the following day, and shortly thereafter
became the beneficiary of a campaign that has raised more than $141,000 from
donors all over the world.
KCTV5.com reports that Darling, from Kansas
City, Missouri explained how she ended up handing over her ring to a panhandler
at the Country Club Plaza: “My rings were bothering me, so I put them in
my coin purse.” She mistakenly threw the ring along with spare change into
the panhandler’s cup.
The Huffington Post reports it wasn’t until
the next day that she realized she had lost her engagement ring. She said:
“I was so incredibly upset because, more than just the value of the ring,
it had sentimental value.”
“The ring was so big that I knew if it
was real, it was expensive,” Harris told KCTV.
Darling was horrified when she realised the
next day what she had done. She went back to Harris, squatted beside him and
told him that she might have given him something valuable.
Sarah said she was thrilled to get her ring
back.
“‘Was it a ring?”‘ he recalled
asking her. “And she says, ‘Yeah.’ And I said ‘Well, I have it.’ “
Darling gave Harris all the cash she had in
her wallet at the time.
“It seemed like a miracle,”
Darling said. “I thought for sure there was no way I would get it
back.”
In explaining why he didn’t keep the ring,
Harris said he had a religious upbringing.
“My grandfather was a reverend,”
Harris said.
“He raised me from the time I was
six-months-old and thank the good Lord, it’s a blessing, but I do still have some
character.”
Online fundraising, which now bankrolls
films and helped to put President Obama in the White House, has given Mr Harris
enough money to buy a three-bedroom house in Kansas City.
The gifts kept coming yesterday, from
donors in Asia, Europe and America. “Hoping that your future is brighter
that your past, and that your best memories in life are yet to come,”
wrote a donor called Gerry from Britain, who gave $20, one of several thousand
donations.
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