Just Passing It On

It wasn’t really my kindness, not in the way people usually mean it.

Two years ago, a student from China arrived at our college.
Shy, polite, still finding his feet — and his English.
One Monday morning he came to see me, agitated and afraid.
The story took time to piece together:
he’d been caught in an online scam,
forced to sit at his computer all weekend,
threatened with harm to his mother back home unless he cooperated.
The voices on the phone were relentless.
They wanted money.
They knew how to scare him.

He hadn’t paid them anything, but the fear was real.
And something in me said: Act now.
“Jump in my car,” I told him.
“We’re going to the police. You can trust the police in this country.”

At first, the officer didn’t think much could be done —
the scammers were offshore, no money had changed hands.
But then, a twist:
the officer had just returned from a secondment in Shanghai.
He spoke fluent Mandarin.
And just then, the scammers called again.

The officer answered.
“Who is this?”
“Who are you?”
“Police,” he said —
and then launched into Mandarin.

Silence.
Then an expletive.
Then the line went dead.

We persuaded the officer to file a report,
to give the event a name, a reference, a foothold in reality.
The threats never returned.
Neither he nor his mother were ever troubled again.

The student stayed on.
Grateful. Quietly completed his degree.
When he graduated and came to say goodbye, he brought a guitar.
“It’s too big to take home,” he said.
“Can I give it to the college?”

I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
So I leaned it in the corner of my office.
And forgot about it.

Until today.

I met a new student from Singapore.
She’d just arrived, and we sat down for a chat.
She told me she’d been teaching herself to play guitar—
but couldn’t bring hers with her.
“It would have cost another seat on the plane,” she said.

Then I remembered.
“I’ve got spare a guitar in my office,” I told her.
“Someone gave it to me a few weeks ago when they were leaving.
Would you like it?”

She lit up.
I handed it over.
We kept talking — about study, life, the year ahead.
I was so caught up in the conversation that I forgot about the guitar.

But on her way out,
she held it up and smiled:
“Thanks for the guitar.”

I suppose that’s how it works, sometimes.
What began in fear
turned into trust,
and became, quietly, a gift.

Not my kindness exactly.
Just something I passed along.
An unexpected economy of grace.