SAN ANTONIO - When Rosemary Almanza returned home from a trip to Perales Elementary school in the Edgewood Independent School District, she was quite surprised to find Fox San Antonio’s Ryan Wolf waiting for her outside a neighbor’s home.
“Any idea what's going on?” he asked with a smile.
“No,” she said with a shocked look on her face.
Almanza is widow who survived a difficult bout with Covid-19 in 2020. It’s the same year she lost her husband after he suffered a heart attack during the height of the pandemic.
“I don't wish that for nobody,” she explained. “So we got to love each other and help each other."
To help cope with the loss after 30 years of marriage, Almanza has been doing random acts of kindness.
“It amazes me that there's people you know, out there still," Darla Sanchez said.
Her neighbor has been helping her with rides to school for her kids.
“I would tell her, you know, when she would take me to pick up the kids, I would tell her how scared I was, especially with my surgeries," Sanchez recalled.
Almanza said she put herself in Sanchez’s shoes and realized the help she needed with her own kids, who are now all grown up.
“When I was younger, and I started having four kids, it was hard,” she explained to Wolf. “It was hard."
Sanchez’s husband Jesse shared news of his wife’s cancer diagnosis with their neighbor around the time of her first surgery for cervical cancer. They were involved in a wreck that totaled her car shortly thereafter. Almanza offered to step in.
“I prayed and I asked God that I needed help and I couldn't do it by myself," Darla’s husband, a truck driver said. “One day, he put Rosemary in my path, you know, and that's when I knew that my prayers and had been answered by God."
Like clockwork over the last month, Almanza has picked up the kids at 7:15 am and then brought them home at 4:15 pm. But on a return trip in October, Wolf waited to surprise her with CASH FOR KINDNESS.
“I'm here because this family thinks the world of you,” he said with the Sanchez Family standing by his side.
Almanza couldn’t believe she was being thanked in such a way.
“I didn't know how to thank you, you know, like, your, you’re angel,” Darla told her. “You know, like, with everything with the cancer with my surgeries, I would tell you how nervous and scared I was. And you would just tell me, you know, everything's gonna be okay. You know, you got this mama, you got it. You know, and I appreciate it. My kids, they love you."
Her 7-year-old daughter Jazell said the car rides “make me smile" whenever Almanza picks her up.
Elijah, her 12-year-old son, used to fear not being able to go to school, since his mom couldn't walk while recovering from multiple surgeries.
“It’s very nice of her,” he said about his neighbor's actions. “So now that we have her we can go to school."
Wolf pulled out a stack of $100 bills from his pocket and handed Almanza the money.
“I have a program on Fox San Antonio called CASH FOR KINDNESS," he told her.
Almanza counted the money in her hand.
“$100, $200, $300, $400, $500,” she said with a tear in her eye. “Thank you.”
Wolf asked how she felt being rewarded for her kindness.
“Blessed," she said in a soft tone as she glared at the money in her hands.
Sanchez’s cancer is now in remission. Her neighbor continues to help while she’s in recovery.