Russell Westbrook Gives His Car To A Single Mother
Russell Westbrook might be 'The Real MVP' after all. The Oklahoma City Thunder's All-Star point guard is more than just a fashion designing, triple-double producing, half-man, half-monster, ball of fire. For as angry of a player as he is out on the floor, he's twice as good of a person off it.
This past February, when Russell Westbrook was named the All-Star game MVP, he was given a Kia, which I'm sure would've gotten a ton burn in his vehicle rotation- if he had kept it. Instead, he decided to surprises a single mother from the OKC area, Kirsten Gonzales, with the keys to her brand new car.
“Are they playing a prank on me or something?” Gonzalez said of her initial reaction. “When he showed me the keys, I was like ‘this is real’. That’s when I started to cry because it’s been such a hard time.”
“There were definitely tears of joy and I could tell some tears of hard work and all the different things she’s been through in her life,” Westbrook said. “Today was a stepping stone in showing her that everything is going to be alright.”
Gonzales, who receives assistance from SunBeam Family Services, has two boys and was just 14 years old when she had her first son. Trying to save up enough money to take care of her kids while simultaneously trying to go to school and work is tough enough as it is. But when her car broke down and she was forced to borrow cars in order to attend school, work, and pick up her boys- Westbrook came through in the clutch.
“It’s so touching and so amazing knowing that there are people out there willing to help the ones that are in need,” Gonzalez said.
“She has such a good heart,” said Erin Engelke, Sunbeam’s Chief External Relations Officer. “She’s so worthy and so humble. She did not see this coming. We had orchestrated it so that it could be a true surprise and it was for her.”
“It’s just all the hard work that she’s done to be able to keep her family together,” Westbrook said as to why Gonzalez was the perfect person to receive the car. “When you see somebody working hard towards a goal and finding ways every day to keep everything afloat for her two boys and her family, you can’t do anything but help them out.”
“He was a gentleman,” Gonzalez said of Westbrook. “He was amazing, he was sweet and so attentive to what I had to say. He’s a really awesome person.”
“I was so touched by the way that he interacted with her,” Engelke said. “He was so gentle, calm and warm. I was completely blown away. He’s a remarkable individual.”
Acts of kindness like this have become commonplace for the MVP-candidate, but they never become any less special.