04/04/2026
On the evening of December 10, 2020, Lavonda Wright Myers was driving through Powder Springs, Georgia, on her way to dinner with her son Jailen.
It was raining.
Jailen glanced out the window, then reached over and tapped his mother on the shoulder.
"Mom — I think that's Jayden."
There was a young man walking along the side of the road in the rain, headphones on, moving at what witnesses would later describe as "the speed of lightning." He was not strolling. He was not dawdling. He was racing — because he could not be late.
Lavonda slowed down. She pulled over. The young man looked up and asked if she could give him a ride — as far as she was going would be fine.
His name was Jayden Sutton. He was 18 years old, a high school senior from Cobb County, Georgia. He worked 40 hours a week at a restaurant, where he juggled roles as a busboy, host, and dishwasher. Every day after school, he got off the bus around 3:30 in the afternoon and walked straight to work — about five miles. He worked a six to seven hour shift. His shift ended at 10:30 at night. Then he walked home. Five more miles. By the time he got back, it was often past midnight.
Lavonda asked him about Uber.
He explained that Uber rides back and forth every day were simply too expensive. His family had fallen on hard times. His mother had recently lost her job, and the family car had been totaled in an accident. He was trying to save his paychecks to buy a car of his own. Until then — he walked.
He told her all of this with a smile on his face.
Lavonda dropped him off at work. She watched him walk through the door. Then she sat in her car, and the tears came.
"Once I dropped him off to work," she later wrote, "his heart and determination filled my eyes with tears." She made him a promise before she drove away: the next time he saw her, she would have a car for him.
They prayed together on the steps of his job.
Then she went home and got to work.
She posted Jayden's story to social media and set up a GoFundMe page, initially hoping to raise $4,000. Within two days, $6,365 had been donated by strangers across the country who had read about a teenager walking ten miles a day in the rain to earn an honest living. Lavonda added $635 of her own money to bring the total to $7,000. She then contacted Nalley Honda in Union City, where the general manager agreed to drop the price of a car from $7,800 down to fit the budget.
A few weeks later, Jayden arrived at the dealership, not knowing what was waiting for him.
Lavonda Wright Myers stood outside holding the keys.
"First of all, let me say — this is your car," she told him, quickly redirecting: "We aren't going to lift my name up. We are going to lift His name up, because it's all about Him."
Jayden could barely speak. "I love her for it," he said finally. "I just want to thank her so much. I don't know how to say thank you."
Then, standing next to a car that had been bought for him by the kindness of strangers, this teenager who had walked five miles to work and five miles home in the rain without ever complaining offered this:
"I knew that if I had to walk to work every day to get a car, that is what I was going to do. If you're doing something good or trying to reach a goal, keep doing it. You might get some help. That's what happened to me."
But Jayden's story was not finished yet.
Not long after receiving the car, he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. He was not seriously injured — but the Looking back on the entire sequence of events — the rain, the walk, the ride, the prayer on the steps, the GoFundMe, the car, the accident, the second car, the scholarship — Jayden said: "2021 had its good moments and its bad moments. I think all the stuff I was doing was finally paying off. It made me feel like everything I was doing wasn't for nothing."
He graduated high school. He is going to college.
He got there by walking.
