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Most 15-year-old kids who manage to wrangle up $1,800 might splurge for an Xbox One X or a new VR headset.
After Treston Harris saved that money working at a Salvation Army camp over the summer, he did something else: he bought his mom a car.
“My mom was telling me like, ‘buy normal things like what kids would do—video games and all that’ and I was like, ‘I would rather buy a car for the family,'” Harris told News 5 Cleveland.
The family car broke down just over a year ago, and his mother, Laurie Ramsier, a single mom of three, couldn’t afford another one.
“We spent all last winter pretty much walking to the store or relying on my mom for doctors appointments, grocery store, you know anything we needed to do,” said Laurie Ramsier, Harris’s mother. “[Now] I don’t have to have the burden of trying to get the kids all together to walk up the street.”
Treston worked every weekday over the summer at The Salvation Army in Wooster as a camp counselor for kids.
“The kids were a little hyper sometimes, but it was all around fun,” he said.
At the end of the summer, he took his camp money and bought a used Jeep. It’s got a few scratches, but it’s a set of wheels.
Harris did, however, use some of the money to have a little fun. He said he spent about $200 on himself and hanging out with his friends.
Ramsier’s relieved to have reliable transportation for the family, but she’s more so just proud of her son for stepping up when he didn’t have to.
“It makes me very proud, it makes me feel like I’ve definitely done something right,” Ramsier said. “It takes a real kind heart and a soft soul like him to do what he did.”
