Traveling with kids is never easy — packing multiple children into a car and trying to drive long distances is a recipe for disaster.
Even with the best travel preparation, things always seem to go wrong.
Kids get bored and uncomfortable, and then start getting grumpy and fussy. All this can make the stress of traveling even worse for parents.
Needless to say, if you're a parent juggling fussy children on a long trip, the last thing you want to worry about is car trouble.
Young parents Autumn and Sean Snyder got an unlucky break when their car broke down on a highway as they returned home from a trip.
Autumn, Sean, and their three children (including a newborn baby) were stranded. The parents weren't sure how they'd keep their three young children calm while they waited for help to arrive.
They called AAA, who dispatched a state trooper to come help the family. When the officer arrived, Autumn assumed he'd just block traffic while they waited for a tow truck. However, he did so much more.
[H/T: Love What Matters]
Autumn shared her story on the Facebook page Love What Matters, where it quickly went viral.
In just four days, the post had over 51,000 reactions and over 3,400 shares.
Autumn wrote:
Yesterday on our way home, we broke down 2 hours away from home… on a busy interstate with three kids in tow.
It wasn't exactly ideal, especially with a hungry newborn.
I wouldn’t get the baby out of his seat to feed him in case we got smacked by another vehicle on the highway, he was the safest in his seat.
We called dispatch and AAA and an Alabama State Trooper showed up to help. I thought he was just going to divert traffic away from our lane, but he did so much more than that.
He loaded the kids and I in his car and got us off the highway and to the closest rest stop.
Sean stayed with the car to wait for the tow truck.
He checked the bathroom for “boogiemans” so Madeline could use the restroom. He shot illuminating helicopters in the sky with the kids while I made calls to try to get home.
Major got really fussy when I was trying to wrangle my other children and calm them down from the evening's happenings. Without hesitation, he took Major out of his seat and gave him the bottle I had prepared from earlier.
It seemed like he does that every day, knew how to hold him and when to burp him. Major even filled his pants during his feeding and the trooper laughed and continued feeding him.
He then helped unload all of our stuff from our car to his and drove our family to the nearest hotel.
It was late, nothing was open, and we couldn’t get a rental car until the morning.
He helped unload our unruly amount of crap into our hotel room, told us where all the rental car places were, gave the girls a hug, and told us to call if we needed anything.
That my friends… is humanity.
This state trooper definitely went above and beyond his call of duty to help this family.
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