Brenda Thomas’s heart became a shell when her 21-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident.
“My heart is always empty,” said Thomas, who lives in Somerset County, Pa., less than a 10-minute drive from the Maryland border. “No matter what I try to fill it with.”
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But she has found something that helps her grief, because it honors her son’s life: She keeps folded pieces of paper, tucked in her purse at all times, and always stored in the glove compartment of her car.
They are acts of kindness cards. Whenever she does a good deed for a stranger — which is about once a week — she passes along a card with a message: “If you receive this card, then you must be a recipient of a random act of kindness.”
At the top of each note is her son’s name, Trevor Paul Thomas. He died in September 2019, only one week into his senior year of college.
“It was the worst thing in the world,” said Thomas, adding that Trevor’s best friend was also involved in the crash and lost his leg.
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Trevor was an athlete who played baseball at Allegany College of Maryland and Penn State Fayette. He was a loyal friend and a force for good, with a witty sense of humor and a big smile.
According to his mother, his most standout quality was his compassion for others — no matter who they were or how well he knew them.
“He was always kind to everyone,” said Thomas, adding that more than 1,000 people attended a service to celebrate her son’s life. “That’s just who he was.”
Trevor regularly shoveled snow off the driveways of older neighbors, delivered hot meals to those in need and befriended classmates who struggled to fit in, she said.
It seemed a natural fit to spearhead a kindness crusade in his memory.
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To mark what would have been her son’s 23rd birthday last February, Thomas, her husband, Paul, and their daughter Whitney started the movement.
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The Thomas family decided to create cards and distribute them around their community, in the hope that it would encourage people to do a good deed as part of Trevor’s legacy. The goal, they said, was to launch an ongoing chain of kindness.
“We not only want people to understand that they’re a recipient of an act of kindness, but we also want them to pay it forward,” said Whitney Thomas, 28.
On each card they wrote the hashtag #liveliketrev23, and urged recipients to consider sharing their experience on social media so that the family could read about the heartwarming gestures that were inspired by the initiative.
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They also included a mantra that they say best describes the way Trevor lived his life: “Be somebody who makes everybody feel like somebody.”
“He had a way of making everyone feel special,” said Brenda Thomas.
The family printed out the cards and left them in their mailbox for friends, neighbors and community members to pick up.
“I was amazed by how many people came and got them,” Brenda Thomas said. “I had to keep printing and printing and printing.”
On Feb. 19, the day of Trevor’s birthday, Facebook posts with #liveliketrev23 quickly started popping up.
“I waited until the end of the evening to read the comments,” said Thomas, who, within seconds of opening Facebook that night, was in tears.
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A number of people whom she did not know did good deeds in honor of her son. While some paid for a stranger’s coffee, others covered the cost of someone’s meal or handed out colorful bouquets of flowers.
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Many people opted to keep their acts of kindness private. Rather than posting publicly on social media, they reached out directly to the family to let them know what they did to honor Trevor.
People created care packages for the homeless, donated blood, delivered doughnuts to local businesses, gave Walmart gift cards to single mothers and planted a tree in Trevor’s name, among numerous other good deeds.
“The support that we’ve received has been overwhelming,” said Thomas, adding that a local pizza restaurant also donated 10 percent of its total sales Feb. 19 to a scholarship fund that the family created after Trevor died. The fund will annually provide a senior student at their son’s high school with a $1,000 award.
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The outpouring has been “very healing for our hearts,” said Whitney Thomas.
Many of the good deeds that people did mirrored things Trevor himself would often do, his family said.
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“He accepted all people,” Brenda Thomas said. “We all need to live like he did.”
Although the #liveliketrev23 initiative simmered down shortly after Trevor’s birthday, the Thomas family keeps the cards with them at all times. They perform a random act of kindness about once a week.
“I think of Trevor every time I do it,” said his mother.
Recently, while visiting her daughter in Taunton, Mass., she decided to pay for the meal of a mother and two children who were dining at the same restaurant as they were.
“It was just something I felt in my heart I had to do, and wanted to do,” said Brenda Thomas. “When I see young moms with their kids, it reminds me of when I would take my kids out to eat. I knew I needed to do it; it didn’t matter how much it was.”
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The recipient of her spontaneous gift was Liana Arruda, 30. She was taking her 9-year-old son and his 5-year-old sister for dinner.
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When she asked the waitress for her check, she was informed that two women — who had already left the restaurant — took care of the tab, totaling about $100, not including the tip.
“I was just in shock,” said Arruda, who said she fought back tears, trying not to cry in front of the kids. “It was really surprising.”
Arruda, a bartender, was especially moved after the waitress handed her the card. Once she learned that she was a recipient of an act of kindness in Trevor Thomas’s honor, she did some research and came across a local story about the project.
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She used it as an opportunity to teach the children about compassion, adding that her son’s “mind was blown” when she told him that a stranger paid for their meal. “I think it was a huge lesson for him to always be kind.”
Arruda is now brainstorming ways to pass on the goodness.
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“I’m waiting to find the perfect opportunity,” she said. “I want it to matter, because it mattered to me.”
For the Thomas family, “that’s what it’s all about,” Brenda Thomas said. “We want to keep Trevor’s memory alive.”
Trevor’s 24th birthday is coming up in February, and his family is planning to continue what they started, with the hashtag #liveliketrev24. Until then, they’ll keep doing good deeds, and they hope to inspire others to do the same.
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Although there’s still — and forever will be — a gaping void in their lives without him, committing to “live like Trev” has helped the Thomas family turn their wrenching pain into purpose.
“We will keep paying it forward in Trevor’s honor because it would make him so proud,” said his mother.
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