Woman Discovers Teen Sleeping in Her Yard. What She Did Next Goes Viral (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Since it was the middle of summer, the Washington State local thought he might have just come back from football practice. “I was in marching band,” Pimentel, a mother of two, tells PEOPLE. “I get it. My stoop is your stoop. It’s free stoops.”

However, as the 31-year-old continued to see the boy, she grew increasingly concerned. One day, while walking with her kids to a local establishment, she made eye contact with him. “There was just a mutual ‘I see you,’ " she recalls. “He looked very cautious. He was looking at me, and I was looking at him.”

By September, Pimentel had seen the teen often enough to notice he looked rougher than before. While she didn’t want to overstep and involve herself in his life, she felt something was off. Then, one day that month, after spotting him on a property adjacent to hers, she closed her garage door and thought, “I should do something.”

Elly Pimentel helps homeless teen.Courtesy of Elly Pimentel

Courtesy of Elly Pimentel

“There was a very clear division in my head where I am a person and that is a person, and we are both fending for ourselves in this world,” she says. “Then the immediate next thought was, ‘Okay, but what if this goes south?’ That’s when I picked up my phone and decided to record whatever it was I was going to do.”

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Putting herself in his shoes, she thought about the temperatures and how hard the cinder blocks must be. She went inside, retrieved an extra sleeping bag, a pillow and a waterproof backpack. Pimentel, who works for Adventurer Manufacturing, filled the bag with cans of soup, spoons, napkins and other essentials, then added a note and sealed everything in a plastic bin.

Elly Pimentel packs up supplies in a bag.Courtesy of Elly Pimentel

“I wrote a note in both English and Spanish,” she says. “I wanted to convey that this wasn’t a trap. I don’t have extensive experience with the unhoused population, but I know there’s a level of caution that comes with living from moment to moment.”

“I was trying to walk a fine line between making this available to him without any strings attached. I’m doing it because I see you, and if this benefits you, great. If you want to continue sleeping on the stoop, that’s fine too. But if you’d like to improve your situation, here are these things, with no pressure either way.”

Note young man left on Elly Pimentel door.Courtesy of Elly Pimentel

A few days later, she found a note taped to her door, written on a piece of receipt paper, thanking her for the items. The teen had also tried to talk to her in person — he’d actually rung her doorbell, she later realized. Although they continued communicating through notes, they didn’t speak face-to-face until later in October.

“When we eventually chatted in person, he shared a bit of his story with me,” she says. “I did my best to keep that information confidential. He has been very vulnerable and shared sensitive details.”

“That led to a 90-minute conversation where he laid out what was going on,” she continues. “I made him aware that we would need to take next steps. I started calling resources and gathering information for that next step.”

Throughout the back-and-forth, Pimentel continued to film and eventually posted the videos on TikTok, where they have since gone viral. She tells PEOPLE that this was completely different from anything she had ever posted before, and while she wasn’t sure if she should post, she felt the TikTok community could provide her with advice on the situation.

She adds that she’s taken this opportunity to educate her young children. At one point, they asked, “Mom, why are you leaving this note here?” She explained that she had seen a boy in need and was leaving a note for him, hoping he would read it and write back.

Elly Pimentel with her two sons.Courtesy of Elly Pimentel

“I try to have conversations with my children about noticing things and putting themselves in someone else’s shoes,” she says. “Ultimately, I hope that’s what people take away from my experience.”

“I think the overarching theme has been to just notice what’s around us,” she adds. “If you can do the bare minimum, why not? I shared my ‘get ready with me’ or ‘pack a trip with me’ videos, and we watch countless videos like that. It’s easy to simply grab what you have if that’s what you want to do. But even if you can’t take further action, just noticing is important. Even taking the first step of recognizing someone as a fellow human is significant progress.”

source: people.com