Matthew Jackson was 28 years old and worked as a personal trainer in Oceanside, California.
On that November 10, 2015, he was at a Trader Joe’s when he saw Jamie-Lynne Knighten, 29, holding her crying baby Wyatt in her arms, with her card declined in front of a long line of people. Without knowing her, he approached and said: “I’ll pay for it.” He covered the more than 200 dollars for her groceries and, when she wanted to thank him, he asked for only one thing: that she promise to do the same for someone else someday.
Jamie went home determined to keep that promise. But when she called the gym a week later to look for him and thank him, she learned that Matthew had died in a car accident the day after that gesture, when the vehicle he was traveling in ran off the road in Oceanside. His mother, LeeAnn Krymow, described him as someone who always thought of others.
Jamie did not stop at the pain: she created Matthew’s Legacy, an initiative that has already led thousands of people around the world to pay kindness forward, just as he asked her to do that day in the supermarket line.
