Irma Survivor's Kind Note Pays It Forward To Florence Evacuee

SARASOTA, FL — The South Carolina license plates on the car Ashleigh Gilleland drove as she fled Florence’s rising floodwaters were a dead giveaway to someone named Chelsea, who tacked an empathetic note on Gilliland's windshield at a Sarasota restaurant.

Chelsea was paying it forward. “Saw your license plate is from South Carolina. Not sure if you evacuated from the storm, but just know Florida is praying for you and your state,” she wrote, explaining she had found a similar note on her car last year when she high-tailed it to Alabama to avoid Hurricane Irma.

The note included a $5 bill and a Walmart gift card.

“This just made my day,” Gilleland, 21, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, wrote in a Facebook post showing pictures of kind gesture. “ I’m so happy to know there are still great people in the world. Always pay it forward!”

Gilleland said in her post that she wishes she could thank Chelsea personally.

And, thanks to the internet, she got the chance.

Chelsea Tokan found Gilleland after the Myrtle Beach woman's Facebook post was widely shared. When she found the note on her car in Alabama last year, “my story went viral,” too, Tokan wrote in a text message that Gilleland shared in a screen grab on her Facebook page.

“But just know I did it because I know exactly how it feels to have to evacuate,” Tokan wrote. “It’s a terrifying feeling. …”

As a native Floridian, Tokan has seen her share of hurricanes, but it wasn’t until last year when Irma battered the state for days that she had to pick up and leave. She came home to find her home damaged.

Small things like kindness can have a lenitive effect in the face of the disaster wrought by Irma and now Florence.

“The thing that got me through was the kindness of everyone in and out of state,” Tokan wrote in her text message. “Just knowing people do care makes some things so devastating seem so small.”

Gilleland, who is pregnant, and her fiancé, David Greer, evacuated Myrtle Beach and headed for Sarasota on Wednesday to get ahead of the deadly storm, she told Yahoo Lifestyle. At least 32 people are dead in the massive flooding in the Carolinas.

In all, about six people in Gilleland’s circle of friends ended up in Sarasota, where they waited out the storm in a hotel. They were at the Wings N Weenies restaurant when Gilleland found the note on her car.

Gilleland and Greer have returned to Myrtle Beach. In her text message, Gilleland made a promise.

“Just know I will be paying it forward and will be keeping the chain going,” she wrote. “Thank you so much for everything and I can’t explain how happy it made me during such a rough time.”

Tokan said that after Irma, she joined the brigades at local churches and handed out food and water “to people who had it worse than me.”

She noted “a simple act of kindness can really turn someone’s day around.”

Here is Gilleland’s Facebook post showing Tokan’s note and gift:

Photo by Ashleigh Gilleland, used with permission