A local family has been spreading compassion throughout Mississippi after a father helped an amputee walk to a gas station to cool off.

Daniel Lucien Hayden of Picayune was driving along Highway 11 Thursday when his wife, Tabatha Hayden, pointed out a man on the side of the road with a walker.

“I happened to glance out my window and see the old man walking with a walker and then I noticed he had one foot amputated,” said Tabatha Hayden.

She saw cars passing the man up and said something to her family, said Tabatha Hayden.

Hayden’s family member later identified the man to be Joey Staten.

“We didn’t know anything [about the man],” said Tabatha Hayden. “My husband wasn’t worried about anything but getting [the man] to the destination.”

The couple was driving in town with their kids in the backseat when Daniel Hayden pulled off the highway and asked Staten if he needed a ride.

When Staten declined, saying he had gotten this far on his own, Daniel Hayden asked, “Well, can I walk for you,” according to Tabatha Hayden.

“My husband put him on his back and carried his walker,” said Tabatha Hayden.

Daniel Hayden carried Staten into the gas station where Staten said he wanted to sit down and cool off.

“My husband is always doing something like that,” said Tabatha Hayden.

Friends and strangers both have told Tabatha Hayden how much her husband’s gesture of compassion has touched them.

“I cried like a baby because when do we ever see human compassion anymore?” said Tabatha Hayden in a post on Facebook. “I posted that to show people that it’s still here.”

After their children witnessed their father’s act of compassion, they too did good deeds for the rest of the day, said Tabatha Hayden.

“It reminded them and sometimes people need that reminder,” that one act of compassion has since rippled out when over 300 people shared the Hayden’s story on Facebook.