VIDEO: Woman Shops for Elderly Couple Afraid to Enter Store Due to Coronavirus

A woman in Bend, Oregon, helped an elderly couple Wednesday after they told her they were afraid to go inside a grocery store due to the Chinese coronavirus.

Professional runner Rebecca Mehra was walking into the Safeway on Century Drive when she heard a woman call out “Hey, hey, you, you, hey,” according to the Bulletin.

When she turned around, Mehra saw an elderly woman waving at her from inside her car, so she went over to speak with her.

The woman told Mehra she and her husband, who are both in their 80s, were afraid to enter the store because they did not want to take the chance of contracting the disease and had no family nearby to help them.

She also said they had waited for nearly 45 minutes to ask the right person to assist them when they saw Mehra walking by.

“Through the crack in the window she handed me a $100 bill and a grocery list, and asked if I would be willing to buy her groceries,” the young woman commented.

Once Mehra entered the grocery store with the money and list, she said there was no hand soap or toilet paper left on the shelves, which were two of the items the couple needed.

Thankfully, a shopper helped Mehra locate the only two bars of soap that were left and gave her one.

“I did feel a sense of confusion and nerves in the store, but also a sense of we’re all in this. We all have to take care of each other,” she recalled.

Once Mehra finished shopping, she went back out to the parking lot and helped load the groceries into the couple’s vehicle.

Following the encounter, Mehra shared the story on her social media profiles and encouraged everyone to be kind to their neighbors during such uncertain times.

I know it’s a time of hysteria and nerves, but offer to help anyone you can. Not everyone has people to turn to.

— Rebecca Mehra (@rebecca_mehra) March 12, 2020

The story of her simple act of kindness quickly went viral and so far has over 106 thousand retweets and 572 thousand likes on Twitter alone.

“It’s just a feel-good thing, I guess, right at the right time. It’s the kind of thing that most people I know, 100 percent would have done the same thing,” Mehra said, adding, “It’s just that I was in the right place at the right time.”