Sean Reavie is a school liaison officer in Phoenix, Arizona, and has spent two decades working side by side with students living realities that almost no one sees. Families without a car, parents with multiple jobs, kids who had never crossed the highway in their own neighborhood.
When funding for Greenway School’s end-of-summer field trip disappeared, coordinator Katie Jenkins did not know who else to ask for help. Reavie did not hesitate: he paid for the full rental of a movie theater, with popcorn, candy, and drinks, so that 144 seventh- and eighth-grade students could experience something they had never experienced. For many, it was the first time they had entered a movie theater.
Before the lights went down, he asked them for just one thing: that when they grew up, they would help others the way he had helped them. It was not an isolated gesture. Last year, he spent more than $3,000 taking them to a water park, and today he runs a superhero-inspired foundation for children who faced fear too soon. Sometimes kindness asks for nothing in return, only that it be repeated.