A Tennessee woman shared doorbell camera footage of a 78-year-old DoorDash driver, Richard Pulley, delivering food to her home. Pulley's story of returning to work after retirement to support his wife, who lost her job and needs expensive medication, resonated with the community. The video went viral, leading to an outpouring of support and donations for Pulley and his wife.
When Brittany Smith saw a delivery worker walk up to her porch in Eastern Tennessee, she was speechless. “I open up the camera and I see this little old man walking up my steps with a Starbucks bag and .
.. my heart just sank,” Smith tells TODAY.com. Her husband is a quadraplegic and chose DoorDash’s “leave at door” option, so he never interacted with the man. “I called my husband and was like, ‘I don’t know what kind of tip you left this man, but it better have been a good one,’” Smith says. “And he’s like, ‘Why?’ and I downloaded the video and sent it to him and he’s like, ‘Oh my God, that is awful.’” Smith felt she needed to do something, so she posted her camera footage on Facebook, asking for help identifying this “precious man.” That video racked up millions of views, and Smith quickly learned the identity of her delivery driver: 78-year-old Richard Pulley, who had been retired until circumstances changed for him and his wife of 56 years. “My wife was working for an insurance company and they ended up letting her go,” Pulley tells TODAY.com, adding that although they receive Social Security, it wasn’t enough to cover their bills and his wife’s costly medication. “When she left, it really put a pinch on us to pay bills,” he continues. “I had gotten lazy. You know, when we get 65 and retire … I wasn’t doing a lot, but all of a sudden, I had to get to work.” Pulley started driving for DoorDash full-time, completing nearly 6,000 deliveries to date, often with his wife accompanying him on the road. “They are the most genuine people I have ever met,” Smith says, adding that she visited Pulley at home to give him an additional $200 cash tip but felt that her work wasn’t done. “He genuinely loves and cares for her and she genuinely loves and cares for him.” Smith says, after she posted the video, she kept hearing from people who also wanted to help Pulley and his wife. “All these people were messaging me like, ‘We’ve got to help Richard set up a GoFundMe,’” Smith says. “So I did. I just started it and posted it and was like, ‘It’ll be what it’ll be.’” Although her GoFundMe, titled “Give Richard a Chance to Rest Again,” has only been up for seven days, it has racked up a mind-boggling sum: over $957,000 from more than 32,000 donors. After learning about Pulley’s story, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu called to thank him for his dedication to the job and added $20,000 to the till. DoorDash also gave Smith a smaller gift for helping bring attention to Pulley and his wife. “I taught myself how to be a good worker again, although the last couple of shifts have worked out hard because people stop and take pictures with me and all sorts of things,” Pulley says. “I’ll get back to work in the next few days.” You read that right: He plans to continue delivery driving. Pulley says that while he did start doing it for financial reasons, working for DoorDash has another benefit: exercise. “They’ve set my wife and I up so that we can live a more comfortable life,” Pulley says. “But after a week or two of this and it cools down, we’ll get back to work because I feel good being useful.”
Doordash Delivery Driver Viral Video Kindness Community Support Retirement
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