Shoe Shiner Donates $200K in Tips to Children in Need

Albert Lexie has been shining shoes at Children’s Hospital for 32 years

US News • 2/22/13 6:37:09 pm • Views: 27,470

People like this keep my faith in humanity alive. A humble, hard-working man quietly donates the few dollars he makes in tips every day to help children whose parents cannot afford to pay for hospital care. He’s been doing this for decades with love in his heart and a smile on his face. He makes me want to do better, to be better—there aren’t many people I can say that about.

There’s video at the link.

Lexie gives every cent of his tips back to the children.

It starts before dawn in the Pittsburgh darkness, as the 88 Penn pulls up in front of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and Albert Lexie gets off the bus.

For 32 years, Lexie has been examining his schedule each morning, like a doctor on the clock. But the longtime shoe shiner’s gift isn’t healing, it’s giving back. […]

More at WTAE Pittsburgh…

12 comments

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Charles Johnson Fri, Feb 22, 2013 6:37:54pm

Had to promote this because it’s such a great story. Made me smile.

Iwouldprefernotto Fri, Feb 22, 2013 6:38:34pm

Some people deserve heaven I lot more than I do…A hell of a lot more.

PhillyPretzel Fri, Feb 22, 2013 6:49:16pm

This is what humanity is all about. CL this is a great article.

Stanley Sea Fri, Feb 22, 2013 6:55:50pm

Love to read this. Most people are good.

BongCrodny Fri, Feb 22, 2013 7:20:16pm

The Big Whobowski

“That rug really tied the TARDIS together…”

CuriousLurker Fri, Feb 22, 2013 8:14:55pm

re: #1 Charles Johnson

Had to promote this because it’s such a great story. Made me smile.

re: #3 PhillyPretzel

This is what humanity is all about. CL this is a great article.

Thanks, it is a great story—made me smile & then get all weepy. ;)

b_sharp Fri, Feb 22, 2013 8:44:19pm

re: #6 CuriousLurker

re: #3 PhillyPretzel

Thanks, it is a great story—made me smile & then get all weepy. ;)

Hey CL. What’s a good resource for learning Wordpress?

CuriousLurker Fri, Feb 22, 2013 9:56:15pm

re: #7 b_sharp

Hey CL. What’s a good resource for learning Wordpress?

In order of importance (learned the hard way):

1.) The WordPress Codex is your best friend, especially the Function Reference

2.) To properly create custom themes it’s imperative that you understand the template hierarchy—it will seriously screw you up if you don’t (trust me, I know)—regardless of whether you’re basing your layout on an existing template or rolling your own. Here’s the codex page on it, which is pretty scary/confusing.

The best tutorial I’ve found for understanding it is this one. The guy moves pretty fast and assumes some basic familiarity with WP, so it may be difficult to keep up at first. You might also find this helpful: How to load files within WordPress themes

3.) There are plugins for everything, some better than others. If you’re looking for extended functionality, check the repository first to avoid reinventing the wheel. Keep in mind that poorly coded plugins may break with future WP upgrades/patches (which are released pretty frequently) or, even worse, they may introduce security vulnerabilities. Try to gauge whether or not the author has been creating plugins for a while and appears like s/he know WTF s/he is doing.

4.) WP snippets. You can start with these, just do your best to make sure they’re not out of date:

[Link: css-tricks.com…]
[Link: snipplr.com…]
[Link: devsnippets.com…]
[Link: wp-snippets.com…]
[Link: blog.leegustin.com…]
[Link: wpsnipp.com…]

5.) WP cheatsheets are helpful, with the same caveat as above (try to make sure they’re not out of date). There are probably others around, but I haven’t checked in a while.

6.) Other excellent resources:

Smashing Magazine’s WP section - Lots & lots of very good stuff. Their site is built on WP, so they know what they’re talking about.

WPBeginner - The name pretty much says it all.

Nettuts+ WP tutorials - Some are “premium” ($), so you’ll probably want to ignore those, but there’s some really good free stuff.

I could probably come up with more, but the above should be enough to keep you busy for a few months, heh. :)

ddeuts1 Sat, Feb 23, 2013 4:16:11am

Read some of the comments. You’ll lose faith in humanity all over again.

A few choice samples:

Did 0bama give as high a percentage of his income to charity as this good man did? NO! So we now we are faced with the fact that 0bama is not giving his fair share. Mitt Romney gave $30 million to charity last year. Joe Biden gave a buck fifty and said ‘go buy a shot gun.’ Democrats suck. I’ll bet any money this entrepreneur voted for Romney.

He might be unloading it all to qualify for better medicare and old people’s reduced rent housing benefits. My Dad blew all his money to do just that when he got old. Guess what? IT WORKED!

I heard Mr. Obama is going to donate $16 Trillion of the money he lost shining shoes to American children. God bless him, what a wonderful man.

You heard wrong, 0bama is going to extort $16 trillion from our children as they are forced to pay for his out of control wealth redistribution schemes. 0bama takes from the children to give to his voters. Pretty much the exact opposite of Robin hood. 0bama be robbin’ from da hood.

It goes on from there.

Alexzander Sat, Feb 23, 2013 11:16:09am

Do you live in Pitt CL?

This hospital is right up the street from me.

CuriousLurker Sat, Feb 23, 2013 12:26:07pm

re: #10 Alexzander

Do you live in Pitt CL?

This hospital is right up the street from me.

No, I live in Jersey. You ought to go over there next time you need a shoe shine. ;)

Shoe Shiner Donates $200K in Tips to Children in Need

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