In 2017, we couldn’t get enough of the feel-good story of Katelyn McClure and the man who “saved” her.
It was fall in Philadelphia when McClure said she ran out of gas one evening on her way home to New Jersey. She was scared, she claimed, and had no cash on hand. A homeless man eventually identified as Johnny Bobbitt Jr., who had been sitting on the side of the road near an exit ramp holding a sign, came to her rescue. He offered her some of his own cash so that she could get a can of gas. As a thank you, she said she would come back and repay him. They later struck up a friendship, she said.
I know that exit ramp—it’s not too far away from my old law school apartment. It’s a busy area where drivers often rush to make their way out of the city. The streets are configured so that you always seem to hit a traffic light. And there are usually clusters of folks waiting by the roads, offering to sell you newspapers or an occasional flower, while others beg for cash with handwritten signs.
So, the story didn’t seem particularly out of place for those of us who knew that intersection. And for others who didn’t know the area? They were pulled in by the story of a frightened young woman who caught a break from a man who was down on his luck. McClure had snapped a photo of Bobbitt to memorialize what had happened that evening, and it quickly went viral.
The GoFundMe Campaign
Shortly after that, McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, started a GoFundMe account to…
