A property manager took over care for a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor after buying an apartment building in upstate New York.
Everyday hero Brock Cvijanovich bought a residential apartment building through the property management firm he owns, and it came with an unexpected clause.
Cvijanovich was sold the building on the condition that he take care of 93-year-old resident Alice Schuman.
Originally, Cvijanovich had been outbid by another buyer, but the former owner offered to knock $50,000 off the price if he agreed to escort Schuman around town on her errands.
Schuman had lived in the building for sixty years, and the original owner had been helping her out for years, but was ready to retire himself.
In addition to taking her out to get groceries and other essentials, he had also been giving her a steep discount on rent for decades.
While Schuman had only been paying $200 a month, other tenants paid ten times as much on average, a kindness that Cvijanovich continued to extend when he took over ownership.
For months, she would knock on his door with her rent check on the first of the month, and the duo would travel to stores around the city.
Over the course of their arrangement, Cvijanovich learned that Schuman had lost her entire family in Nazi concentration camps, and came to the United States after she had survived the Holocaust.
“She literally had nobody else,” he told Fox News Digital. “That was a lot of the reason that it went the way that it did.”
One day Schuman didn’t show up at Cvijanovich’s doorstep during their regularly scheduled outing, and he instead went by her apartment.
He heard faint calls for help when he arrived, and kicked down the door to find that she was incapacitated.
After she was admitted to the hospital, doctors decided that she was unable to care for herself and needed to be put into the state’s care.
With the support of his nurse mother, Cvijanovich became Schuman’s legal guardian, and visited her in the hospital daily for her entire nine-month stay.
She was eventually well enough to be transferred to a nursing facility, but died of pneumonia in January with Cvijanovich and his mother by her side.
Another everyday hero helped out a homeless man this month, when she hired him to work on his farm after saw him panhandling on the street.
Ontario, Canada native Danielle MacDuff struck up a conversation with Brian Bannister, 60, while he was struggling to make ends meet by collecting change, and offered him a job after only a 25-minute talk.
After losing two wives and overcoming a drug addiction, Bannister was living in an unheated shed with no work prospects.
A day after meeting MacDuff, he became a full-time carer to her 200 animals, who he helps maintain on her farm for whatever money she can spare.
“He’s so kind, compassionate, he’s amazing with my children, my animals,” MacDuff told CTV News. “And his willingness to help me on the farm is very, very much appreciated.”
She bought him a phone and took him to get his first haircut for years, then enlisted the local community to raise money for new clothes and temporary shelter.
A GoFundMe page MacDuff set up to benefit Bannister has raised more than $10,000 to go towards a permanent place to live.
