When one person saw three children playing in a makeshift pool on a truck bed, he or she maliciously shared the photo on social media in an attempt to ridicule the San Antonio family and the West Side. When Todd Arredondo saw the now-deleted Facebook post, he learned they didn’t live too far away from him, so he bought them an inflatable pool and paid them a visit. “[Commenters] were poking and making fun of the family,” the 31-year-old told mySA.com. “Everyone was laughing and putting down the West Side. [The family] were making good with what they had.”
What started as a random act of kindness has turned into a new project, Pools for Kids. He didn’t want to just stop at one family, so he turned to the internet – the same place that cruelly targeted this San Antonio family – to raise money for other children in the city. He started a GoFundMe page and initially aimed to raise $250. After reaching that goal in minutes, he upped it to $500, which he also met in minutes. He raised it a few more times, and now the goal is $10,000. He’s about 70 percent there. “We started out wanting to help 5 families,” he wrote on GoFundMe. “We are at the point of helping 24 families now. I will continue all summer to raise money to buy as many pools that we possibly can for kids.”
The black-bearded Santa Claus – as he calls himself – plans to take three weeks off of work to continue working on this project, and in the future, he’d like to make Pools for Kids a non-profit organization. In the meantime, he’s sharing pictures of the touching interactions on Facebook. Check out a few below: