'Tis the season for generosity, but Tavon Austin and Robert Quinn took it to a whole other level.
In a heartwarming act of kindness, the two L.A. Rams football players surprised a Shwonna Cox and her six children with a fully-furnished apartment and Christmas gifts, the L.A. Times reports.
Cox and her family have struggled with homelessness in the past.
Not long ago, LA Family Housing, an NGO that helps homeless families and individuals transition out of homelessness, found the Cox family temporary housing to help get Cox back on her feet. However, due to the recent California wildfires, the family had to move to a new space.
Then they were evacuated from that new apartment, again due to the wildfires.
“It’s really been a crazy couple of weeks,” Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and chief executive of LA Family Housing, said. “They were affected by two separate fires in two totally different parts of town."
Last year, Austin and Quinn partnered with the LA Family Housing Authority to help out L.A. families in need. And when the football players came to the organization this year asking what they could do to help, LA Family Housing knew just where to start.
The two Rams spent a day with other volunteers putting together furniture, setting up appliances and wrapping the gifts the players had purchased at the Cox family's new home this week.
After a hard day's work, there was a knock at the door: it was Cox and her children.
The children were all smiles, exploring their new home. And their mother was in tears.
“I just feel at peace,” Cox said, “And thank them for everything.”
“When it rains it pours — and I hope [the Cox family is] feeling the outpouring of love,” Klasky-Gamer said.
The players were glad to see the family's reaction, but also said that it was something they felt compelled to do.
“I always want to do something to help a person," Austin said. "You can’t help everybody in the world but at least you can get to one, and that’s where my heart has always been, so that’s what is to me. I just feel good they have a place to rest their head and call a place home.”
And Quinn said, “When you’re blessed as tremendously as we are as athletes, and what we get paid to do and all that, and you have an opportunity to give back and bless people that have come up through some hard times, you give back and try to make their lives a little bit easier. Like I always say, if together we as a people work together, we can bring heaven on earth. So this is just my start of trying to put heaven here."
