Boy, 10, and his friend clean snow off cars of Westerly Hospital staff to say thank you

WESTERLY, R.I. (WJAR) — In the thick of Monday's storm, two people took on a task at Westerly Hospital to try and help some essential employees get home to their families faster.

Monday afternoon into the evening hours, Abbey Meeker of Westerly, and her friend's son -- 10-year-old Christian Stone -- put on their winter gear and headed to the hospital's parking lots.

"Christian wanted to do something good for nurses about a month ago when it stormed, and he said next time it snowed, he wanted to clean cars off for nurses because of COVID," explained Meeker. "I told him I would come with him."

"I was thinking they've been helping us a lot through this whole pandemic, and I figured why don't we help them, you know?" said Stone. "All day, every day the nurses here, they deal with the pandemic like COVID and they want to get home from work, so we thought we would make it a tiny bit easier for them by cleaning off their cars for them."

Using different winter tools, the pair took it upon themselves to clean off the cars of staff at the hospital.

"We came here around 2 o'clock, we cleaned off the first shift cars and the nurses came out. They thanked us," said Meeker. "Honestly, we've probably done at least 80 cars. We did 20 there, 30 here, another 20 before we called it quits," said Meeker while pointing to many of the hospital's parking lots.

The parking lots were being professionally plowed.

The car-cleaning service was provided free of charge by the pair.

"It sucked. I hate the snow but being out here with him because this is what he's passionate about. I did it because he wanted to do it," said Meeker. "It's a good feeling."

"It's been cold but extremely fun seeing how happy they get," said Stone. "Some of them say, 'Thank you so much' and I'm just really happy to see them happy."

Meeker and Stone said on a few occasions, some of the staff offered to pay them for their services.

"We just said, 'We're doing this for you guys cause, you're here for us'," said Meeker.

"I feel like I actually helped someone out and that's a really good feeling, when you know someone has been helped out," said Stone. "We want them to be able go home and see their family after a long day of work."