Boy Gives Last Dollar to Millionaire He Mistook for a Homeless Man

Boy Gives His Last Dollar to a Millionaire He Mistook for a Homeless Man and Is Rewarded for His Generosity

By Regina Sienra on September 3, 2024

Dollar bill held by the hand of a black boy.

Photo: MillaFedotova/Depositphotos

Sometimes, the most striking acts of kindness are those that come from a child. And there's no better example of this than the story of 9-year-old Kelvin Ellis Jr. The boy was at a coffee shop in his home state of Louisiana when he spotted a disheveled man praying in the corner. Concerned about him, Kelvin went up to him with the only money he had—a dollar bill he had just been given for his good grades—and offered it to the man. To his surprise, the man wasn't homeless but a millionaire who was moved by his gesture.

The disheveled man in question turned out to be Matt Busbice, owner of sporting goods store BuckFeather in Baton Rouge. After being awakened by a fire alarm in his apartment complex, but discovering that there was no fire, he decided to grab a coffee. He then realized he had forgotten to pray that morning, so he headed to the patio for a quick moment of reflection. “And I started to slowly open my eyes, and there's a kid coming at me, about my height,” Busbice told CBS. The entrepreneur got himself ready for confrontation. “And I go, ‘What?'” Busbice said.

“‘If you're homeless, here's a dollar,'” Kelvin replied. “…I always wanted to help a homeless person, and I finally had the opportunity.” The boy's action deeply touched Busbice. After introducing himself and explaining the situation, he bought Kelvin breakfast and his father some coffee, promising to stay in touch.

Busbice later gave Ellis a shopping spree at BuckFeather, including a new bike. However, what Kelvin initially expected to get out of this interaction was something else. “Joy, because I helped someone,” Ellis said. “Give something away, and you feel like you've got a lot of things from it.”

To which Busbice added, “If you give, you're actually going to get more out of that. I couldn't grasp that as a kid. And if we can spread that around, everything changes.”

The pair later got together to discuss how the event had changed them. Speaking in front of an audience Kelvin revealed that one of the aspects that made him think Busbice was a homeless person were his ashy knees, which the millionaire attributed to his psoriasis.

Ultimately, both of them seem to have made a friend for life. To Busbice, the whole endeavor made him feel richer than any other day in his life. “I haven't had that much faith in humanity in a very long time,” he said.