Karen Klein became an unwitting web star this week when a video of a very painful moment in her life — titled “ Making the Bus Monitor Cry ,” which garnered nearly 4 million views on YouTube — went massively viral.
If you’ve been following the Karen Klein story on the internet , you probably already know that the sad incident has a surprisingly happy ending. Reactions to the video across the mean, mean web were nearly unanimously supportive, and as we’ve seen in recent years, when the web opens its heart, it also opens its wallet.
Yes, since Karen Klein’s sad tale hit the web and began cutting onions in homes across America and the globe, an indiegogo campaign to send the bullied bus monitor on the vacation of a lifetime has blown up as well — raising more than $400,000 for Klein since its inception a scant few days ago.
But Karen Klein never asked for a vacation — the elderly widow simply wanted an apology from the boys that made her cry in a ten-minute long torrent of abuse. And she got an apology from two of the boys, identified only by their first names, Josh and Wesley — but now the boys are getting death threats for their role in the viral incident.
In a statement, Josh said of his treatment of Karen Klein:
“I am so sorry for the way I treated you. When I saw the video I was disgusted and could not believe I did that.”
Wesley said:
“I wish I had never done those things… If that had happened to someone in my family, like my mother or grandmother, I would be really mad at the people who did that to them.”
One of the boy’s fathers, Robert Helm, told Karen Klein:
“There’s no excuse. And we’re going to get to the bottom of that, but it really broke my heart and I shed a lot of tears thinking about that whole thing and I just want you to know that my family, all of us, are deeply saddened by this whole thing and we’re going to get it right.”
Despite the very public drama Klein has been thrust into, however, the bus monitor still spared concern for the boys’ families — when talking to Helm about the fallout, including death threats, she asked him, “…but you’ll be OK, right?”
