The news can be overwhelmingly terrible sometimes, but this feel-good story is definitely one you’ll want to read. A homeless man got hundreds of job offers from handing out his resume on the highway, and honestly, his inspirational story might just bring tears to your eyes.
On Friday, July 27th, 26-year-old David Casarez stood on the median of a busy intersection in Mountain View, California, dressed in a suit and tie and armed with a sign for everyone passing by. He wasn’t asking for money or food, though — he was asking for a chance at a job. Casarez held a sign that read, “Homeless. Hungry 4 success. Take a resume,” with a stack of resumes sitting next to him.
A few hours later, a woman named Jasmine Scofield drove by, stopped, and asked Casarez if she could snap a photo of him and post it online. He agreed, and so she tweeted out his photo, with the caption, “Today I saw this young homeless man asking for people to take a resume rather than asking for money. If anyone in the Silicon Valley could help him out, that would be amazing. Please RT so we can help David out.” In another tweet, she added, “I just got off the phone with David. We spoke for about an hour. He came to the Silicon Valley with a dream to be successful in tech and has a lot to offer the community. He’s sleeping in parks & still trying to get freelance work, interviews, and applications in.”
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It didn’t take long for the the tweet to go viral (as of publication, it had over 135,000 retweets and over 217,000 likes).
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Once that happened, the job offers came flooding in. Just days later, Casarez had received over 200 job offers, some from huge companies like Google, Pandora, LinkedIn, and Netflix.
According to the New York Post, Casarez grew up in Laredo, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Texas A&M University, then got a job as a web developer at General Motors in Austin. A few years later, he took his small savings and went to Silicon Valley to pursue his dream of owning a tech startup. Unfortunately, Casarez was unsuccessful and ran out of money in June. He did some freelancing to float by, and lived in his car for more than a year, until, a month ago, it was repossessed. That was when he began sleeping in a park.
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Casarez knew he needed to do something to put his life back together and came up with the resume idea. In an interview with KNTV, he explained his decision, saying, “This is my make it or break it moment. I have to do something crazy.”
And with the help of Scofield’s tweet, he did. Casarez is just as surprised as everyone else, and said, “I knew it would be posted on social media, I didn’t know it would blow up like this. I’m trying not to take any money, I really do just want a job opportunity, that’s all I’m asking.”
We can’t help but hope for nothing but the best for Casarez. His story is an important reminder that you shouldn’t judge someone based on their living situation, and that everyone deserves a chance at a good job.
