Let’s start your Mondays off on a good note with a story about a young nurse from California and the generosity of a Scion xB owner. Kayla Cooper walked into an Auto City dealership with the intent of purchasing a vehicle. What she got instead was a free car from Dan Laguardia, who handed her the keys to his Scion xB after learning that Cooper couldn’t close a deal on her car purchase. There’s obviously more to this story — we’ll get to that — but, in a nutshell, it shows the power of kindness and generosity in a world that probably needs more doses of both.

Put yourselves in Kayla Cooper’s shoes for a minute. Imagine having two part-time jobs and nursing school to get to. You’re going to need a car to get around just to move from one place to another. Unfortunately, Cooper doesn’t have a car, so she’s managed her situation by borrowing cars from family and friends to help get her to school and her two jobs. Fortunately, Cooper had saved enough money to purchase a car, so she went to an Auto City dealership in El Cajon, California to finally get her own set of wheels. Unfortunately, that plan went south quickly after she couldn’t come to an acceptable downpayment plan with the dealership.

Dan Laguardia was in the same dealership as Cooper. He was there to trade in his Scion xB when he overheard Cooper’s conversation with the Auto City sales representative. After watching her leave the dealership empty-handed, Laguardia told the sales rep to call her back. The sales rep obliged, and after Cooper had returned, LaGuardia handed her the keys to the Scion xB that he was planning to trade. Boom. Done deal.

Understandably, Cooper couldn’t believe what was happening. Was this man really giving her the keys to his car? For free? The confusion eventually turned to elation when Laguardia signed over the car’s title to her, no strings attached. Just like that, Cooper had her ride, and she didn’t have to pay a penny for it.

In speaking with local media, Laguardia gave a simple, yet powerful, explanation on why he decided to give his car away for free to a total stranger. “That gives her a bit of a jump-start in life, which if everybody did that for everybody else, we’d be in a much better place,” he said. Was Laguardia concerned that he ended up losing the car he had planned to trade for a newer model? Not one bit. “Life has a way of making things up and making them even,” he added.

For her part, Cooper was understandably shocked by the developments that just transpired. But she ended up with a car of her own, and she didn’t have to pay anything for it. The real winner in this story, though, is Laguardia. Massive props to this dude for the unbelievable generosity and kindness he showed to a stranger who clearly needed her own car, but apparently still couldn’t afford one.

The car itself — a Scion xB — isn’t exactly new, but at the very least, it can Cooper where she needs to go in the future. We looked at listings of used first-generation xB models — that’s the model that Laguardia wanted to trade — and those models typically cost somewhere in the $5,000 to $7,000 range. Instead, he just gave it away, knowing that Cooper needed the xB more than the credits he was going to receive by trading it in for a newer model.

This is the kind of story that we need. More than car news or car reviews, acts of kindness and generosity help clear the air from a lot of toxicity that’s engulfing our world these days. Congratulations to Kayla Cooper on her new ride, and massive props to Dan Laguardia for his random of act of kindness. He’s right, too. If we did things like this more often, the world would be a better place to live in.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2011 Scion xB.