In a touching story, a New York City woman paid for a homeless man's funeral after befriending him over the past decade.
DNAinfo reports that for the past 11 years, Juanita Vega, 51, woke Richard Coleman up as he slept in the vestibule of the Upper East Side bank where she worked. When she learned that the 62-year-old died on Apr. 16, she took it hard. But when she learned that Coleman didn't have any next-of-kin to take cover the expenses of his burial, she put up $2,000 of her own money for the service, which took place last Thursday at Elizabeth, N.J.'s Rosemount Memorial Park.
Vega told DNAinfo that she didn't want a public cemetery to be his final resting place. "I know about Potter’s Field and I didn’t want him to end up there," she explained. "He was a nice person. He didn’t deserve that."
What's more, members of the community where Coleman had been a staple since the '70s had a separate memorial service for him earlier this month and raised $1,500 to be donated in his name to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A little kindness goes a long way.
[via DNAinfo]
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