COLUMBIA, S.C. — Last Friday, a Columbia man helped out his fellow neighbors. For many, it has been difficult getting certain products at the stores and online as the country responds to the threat of coronavirus.
Last week Mark Cox found himself with extra hand sanitizer after ordering it online. "I had more than I needed and was happy to give it to other people," Mark Cox said.
"I went on to Amazon to see if I could actually get some for myself and realized, if you kind of know some of the tricks about how the online stores work, I was able to get some for myself, for my family and then realized I could still get more," Cox said. "I just decided to kind of pass it out to the people in my community."
Cox passed it on to nearly twenty neighbors.
"We've gotten really good at supporting each other when the chips are down," Cox said.
He put the hand sanitizer into the mailboxes of those neighbors who didn't have the same luck finding it. Many stores and online sites are sold out of items like hand sanitizer, but Cox said he had a secret up his sleeve.
"The trick is to hit refresh as many times as you possibly can," Cox said.
On the bottles he left a sticker on it saying, be good to each other, be safe and will get through this together.
"Many of them were very thankful. Some of them dropped off some thank you notes. A couple of them came over and said thank you in person and hit me up on Facebook, as well," Cox said. "So everyone's been real thankful for it, and I'm happy to do it."
And now, he hopes other will also do neighborly gestures moving forward.
"We actually show our most gracious selves and the best part of humanity when things actually make us step up and realize things are more important. And hopefully somebody will look at what I've done, and take that and be kind to each other, and help each other get through as much as possible," Cox said.