The world could use more random acts of kindness.
Tony Carlson, a Tallahassee police officer, didn’t think he was being recorded one Sunday afternoon.
Answering a call near Circle K on Thomasville Road, Carlson pulled into a gas station parking lot. He saw a homeless man there trying to shave off his beard.
The man the officer named Phil did not have a mirror and had razor problems. So Carlson stopped to help him. He tightened the screw on the razor and shaved off Phil’s thick beard. Phil applied for a job at nearby McDonald’s. He told the officer that he just needed a clean shave to get a job.
“If he wants to help himself, I need to be more than helpful and try to help him as best I can,” said Carlson.
The video, filmed by a resident at a gas station and then posted to Facebook, had 113,000 views and over 2,000 Facebook shares as of Monday afternoon.
“Hopefully this will give Phil a job,” said Carlson.
As a McDonald’s spokeswoman said on Monday afternoon by a McDonald’s spokeswoman, a McDonald’s spokeswoman told the Tallahassee Democrat until his biography was verified and he provided ID.