Student Buys Sandwich For Homeless Man, Facebook Photo Goes Viral For All The Right Reasons

When Ben Holmes saw a man and his dog living on the street, he was only trying to offer a little help. But his simple act of kindness has now been seen by thousands on Facebook, and the British medical student who is training at a hospital in Preston — a city of about 130,000 in England’s Lancashire region — says he hopes people who saw his post will now see a little of themselves next time they pass a homeless person on the street.

The photo of Ben with the homeless man, who was in his 30s and asked to be called “Bill,” was posted to Ben Holmes’ Facebook page on September 14. Since then, the pic has been shared more than 10,200 times. And it all started with Bill’s little dog, Tia. Here is the full photo…

“He had a dog, and I like dogs so I knelt down to stroke it and he didn’t even look up. He was just staring at the floor,” Ben told The Huddersfield Examiner newspaper. “I spoke to him and asked if he was okay and wanted a sandwich, and he said yes, if it wasn’t too much trouble, but not to go out of my way for him, so I bought us a sandwich each and some cookies for the dog.”

The shared Subway sandwich led to a conversation, and that’s when Ben saw that while he was med student most likely on his way to a rewarding and prestigious career as a physician and Bill was sleeping on the street with only his dog for companionship, the two of them weren’t that far apart.

“I would never have thought I could be homeless, but he said a few months ago he was just like anybody else with a mortgage, a job and a girlfriend and then he had a bit of bad luck and lost it all,” said Ben. “You never realize until you talk to people what they are going through.”

But what may be most striking about the things Bill told Ben Holmes was his description of the emotional pain caused by homelessness, pain inflicted by others who may not even know they’re hurting another human being.

“Bill described that the worst thing about being homeless isn’t the cold or the hunger, it’s that most people who walk past him look down on him as though it’s his fault and he chose to live like this,” Ben wrote in his Facebook post that accompanied the now-viral photo. “If we all stopped judging and helped a little, people like Bill and his dog Tia wouldn’t have to feel hungry and alone.”

Ben Holmes told the local newspaper that he hoped that by going viral, his Facebook post might help people feel more empathy with the next homeless person they see. “You might walk past a homeless person and not think twice about it but they are real people, just like us,” he said.