I Picked Up a Stranger and It Changed Both Our Lives #LightTheWorld

 

Airdate: December 3, 2025

Julie Rose: Can you really help someone if you don't know how to give them what they need?

Rachel Scholes: I told her I'd help, and I don't know what to do. All I thought about is that she's far away from services, and I need to get her somewhere closer.

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. This is a special episode that's part of Light the World, which is a global invitation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to spread light and serve others during the holiday season. My team and I here at Uncomfy are members of the Church, and we have found this annual Light the World effort to be a great way to focus our thoughts on others during the holidays. So, let's get Uncomfy. Today, we're hearing how one ordinary morning in Tucson, Arizona turned into an extraordinary reminder that no act of kindness is wasted. Rachel Scholes is with me. She's a mom of seven. She lives in Tucson, and I'm so happy to have her with us. Rachel, thank you so much for your time.

Rachel Scholes: Oh, I'm happy to be here.

Julie Rose: Would you take us back to that morning when you had the opportunity to help somebody?

Rachel Scholes: So, it was probably about 16 years ago, I was having a normal, uh, weekday morning, which is feed the kids breakfast, load them all up in the big old Excursion and start dropping them off at their three different schools. I've got babies in car seats, toddlers in there, and, um, you know, Tucson's a large city, we have our share of, um, homeless people, uh, but out in where I live, we just don't see them out there at all. So, I'm driving down the big hill to get to the high school, and as I'm driving down the hill, I see an older lady who is obviously unhoused, who is pushing a shopping cart, just brimming full of I don't know what, and I immediately think, "She is lost," and as I start to pass her, I'm like, "I gotta help her. I gotta see if, what I can do," I didn't know what, like, just immediately, "I gotta help her." So I, I pull over quickly, and I ask her, "Are you lost? Do you need help?" And she was thrilled to say, "Yeah, I'd love help," and then I was like, "Crap, what do I do?" Like, I have no clue what to do. She's got this shopping cart full of stuff, and my kids are in the car, but of course I get out, and I say, "Let's get your stuff and put it in the car." So, we start unloading stuff, which was honestly mostly newspapers, but I'm, no judgment here, let's just put it in the back of the car.

Julie Rose: What, what were you thinking in, in that moment, right? I mean, was, is this the kind of thing you normally do, stop by and, like, pick, pick people up on the side of the road if they need help? Are you, you know?

Rachel Scholes: I'm very impulsive, so I often act before thinking. I mean, yes, if someone needs help, I, I do often. I love people. I love strangers even more than, um, not more than friends, but I, I love meeting people, and if there's someone that needs help, I, I never know what to do. Like, "What can I do to help?" And that's kind of the situation I was in with her. Like,I told her I'd help and I don't know what to do. All I thought about is that she's far away from services, and I need to get her somewhere closer. But once I got her in the car sitting with my kids, um, and I'm dropping them off, I think, "I, I can't just drop her off in town. Like, that isn't very charitable. Like, she needs more," and at each, at each stop, um, and this lady, I found out her name was Jackie, at each stop, she rolled down the window and got this cute little smile on and just waved out the window as I say goodbye to my kids, and I think they're, like, dying, putting their heads down like, "What has mom done again?" And, um, drop off the last child, um, Noah, go back with Lucy and, and Sam, um, my two, baby and toddler and Jackie and I think, "I can feed her breakfast. I can do that, and let me then regroup and see what I can do to help her."

Julie Rose: Rachel, did you have any hesitation bringing her into your home with your children?

Rachel Scholes: Maybe should have, but, um, I didn't, um, and, and, and that's not to say that I don't have hesitation, and I haven't had hesitation at other times because I have, but, um, I just did it. My hesitation would be probably telling my husband what I had done. Um,

Julie Rose: he might not be thrilled to know.

Rachel Scholes: I will say that Jackie felt, I, I didn't know at the time, but once I had her in the car, and we were talking, she felt harmless to me at that point, and she felt very vulnerable.

Julie Rose: What was the story she was telling you?

Rachel Scholes: Oh, gosh. She had, so, she had stories, and I, I didn't, I couldn't discern whether what she was saying was true or not. She said that, uh, she had been married and had two stepchildren, and her husband had died and that her stepchildren kicked her outta the house and that she had been without a house ever since, and then she kept telling me, she said, "I have money. I have money in the bank. I just need, um, I don't have any ID, somebody stole my purse, and it had my ID in it, and so I can't get my money out of the bank." And I will say, when she said that, I was thinking, "Okay, I don't, this is a story, I don't, I don't know that I believe this, but okay, I'm going along with it," and, like, she was saying, like, "I have thousands in the bank," and again, I'm thinking, "Okay, I should help her, but I don't, I don't know how to get someone ID, I don't know how to go to the bank and say, 'This woman has an account here'," um, and then she also said, like, she had social security checks that she should be getting, but, um, because she didn't have an address, they weren't getting delivered. So, you know, clearly I felt in over my head.

Julie Rose: And, and did you have just, like, a, happen to have an open morning free of responsibility to kind of devote to this?

Rachel Scholes: So, I was a stay-at-home mother for those years, so my mornings were whatever life brought me, right? It was make breakfast, feed the kids, get them to school, come home, try to clean up the mess, feed babies, put them to bed, nurse, you know, um, change diapers, and, uh, try to have some semblance of order and maybe a dinner thought out, um, before I go to do the pickup at three o'clock, and start doing piano lessons and sports and all of that stuff, so, yeah. I mean, did I have a free moment? No. When, when you're raising six, seven kids, you don't have a moment to breathe, but, um, yeah, it's just whatever life brings you.

Julie Rose: So, she's at your house, you've fed her, she's taken a shower.

Rachel Scholes: So, yeah, I bring her in the house, ask her if she wants pancakes, and she felt so, it was like she felt so honored to be served. I had her sitting at the table, and I mean, I have that distinct memory of that smile on the face as I'm feeding her leftover pancakes, and then I asked her if she wanted to get a shower 'cause I'm like, "Okay, this, she clearly hasn't had a shower for a while," so she says, "Yes," I get her in the shower and then I decide, I actually say through the door, "Can I wash your clothes for you?" She said, "Sure," so I go through her belongings, find whatever clothes I can, and the clothes that she had handed me through the door, I put into the, the laundry, and as she's in the shower, it hit me that, "Oh my gosh, I gotta get my butt over to the elementary school," because it's, um, it was a special day where you come in and your child reads to you and your grandparent, to their grandparents, it was Read to Grandparent Day at the elementary school, and I had to go, and so I was like, "What am I gonna do? I haven't fixed this problem yet. She's in my shower. I have to go over to the elementary school. I'm not sure that I'm comfortable leaving her in my house alone," so I said, "Jackie, uh, I gotta run to the elementary school, um, so my child can read to me, would you like to come with me?" And, oh my goodness, she was like, "Yes!" She was so excited, so then I'm like, "She's got no clothes. They're all in the laundry," so, um, she was a tiny little thing, I just grabbed some of my clothes, give her a pair of pants and, um, a shirt, they were too big on her, and she comes out dressed in my clothes, and I say, "Okay, let's grab the babies, let's go!" Hop into the Excursion again and run over to the school and start walking in with Jackie, um, to the lunchroom. My son is waiting for me, and I'm probably late at this point, and he looks up and sees me with Jackie, and, um, we just pretended it was grandma. We pretended Jackie was grandma, and we sit down, and Noah reads to us, and, um, we get up and leave, and Jackie looks like she's in heaven. I get back in the car and that's when I'm like, "I've got to solve this problem." Get back to the house, um, finish the laundry up, she gets dressed in her clothes as I'm making phone calls, and I make my first phone call to, um, just to the non-emergency line to the police officer to ask them, "Look, what services are available? Here's what, the situation that I have," and he was able to quickly give me three names and numbers of different, um, agencies that might be able to help, like homeless shelters, and one of them was called The Giving Tree, so I decided to give them a call. Um, I called them and kind of recounted the story, and they said, "Sure, bring her down. We would love to help," so I felt like, "Okay, I've hit the jackpot. I can do this." So, um, load up, drive down, it was probably 20 minutes away, get to The Giving Tree, walked into the office with her and they looked legit, they looked eager and happy to help, told the story, and I just went on my way, and I waved goodbye and went back, and I did my morning or my afternoon routine, and, um, couple days later, I thought, "I should go check on Jackie and see what happened," but you know what? Like, I didn't, I don't remember what happened, like, stuff was going on, I had stuff every day, and I remember the next week I had the same thought, "I should go check on Jackie and see whatever came of that," and I didn't; I never checked on her for two years, um, until I had an opportunity for the story to come full circle, and it was just completely unexpected. 

Julie Rose: I'd love to hear it. Yeah, tell us what happened.

Rachel Scholes: Um, so at the time I was a youth leader for our youth group, and I was in charge of the big, uh, activity for the upcoming month, and I thought it would be cool to have the teenagers go and serve at, um, it was a place called The Feedlot, where um, the homeless people, unhoused people could come and get fed dinner.

Julie Rose: And this is your church, this is the youth, youth group at church?

Rachel Scholes: This is, uh, youth at church, yeah, teen, yes, teenagers that I would be bringing down but I wanted to check out what it was like before committing to doing this for a service project and, um, I'm trying to cook dinner. I call my husband on the way home from work. He works down by the airport, so he, it's a 45 minute drive, so I said, "Hey Rich, do you have time? Would you mind stopping by The Feedlot? Here's an address, could you just go and help do the feeding and tell me what you think it's like and would it be appropriate to bring our youth there for an activity?" So, he said, "Sure." So, um, he came home a couple hours later, he went and served and he was really excited to tell me. He said, "Oh my gosh, I met two, um, you know, 20-something-year-old girls that are getting ready to go on their LDS mission, um, they have mission calls, they're getting ready to go, they had a couple months before, and, um, they decided to come and volunteer at The Giving Tree, so they were living there and volunteering," and he said, "So, I invited them to dinner Sunday. Is that okay?" I said, "Sure, I'd love it." So, um, Sunday comes, and one of the girls calls and says, "Do you mind if we bring, um, our director and her husband with us?" We said, "Sure, it'd be great."

Julie Rose: From the nonprofit?

Rachel Scholes: From the nonprofit that's doing this Feedlot, yeah, sorry, the, the nonprofit that's in charge of this Feedlot. So, we are eating dinner outside under the ramada and just talking, and I was excited to be able to talk to this director and her husband who've been running this homeless shelter for years and years, and I was asking questions about, um, about the, the people they served, and then she dived in to tell me a story of, um, one lady that they had that was an older lady, and, um, somebody brought her in and dropped her off and she said, "Um, when the old lady, uh, well she dropped her off, and this lady talked about how her kids had kicked her out of the house and that she had money somewhere in a bank account, but she had no, uh, ID," and she said, "We don't know who dropped her off, but the lady just kept saying, 'It was this crazy lady with lots of kids, it was this crazy lady with lots of kids,'" and then I looked at my husband and I said, "That sounds like Jackie," and I turned to the director, I said, "Was her name Jackie?" And the director said, "Yes," and I said, "Oh my gosh. I'm that crazy lady. I picked her up," and, um, we just laughed, and so I said, "Well, what happened? Tell me the, you know, tell me the end of the story," and, um, they did exactly what they told me they would do. They got her ID, and sure enough, everything she told me had been true. She had been kicked out of her house by her stepchildren, they were cashing her social security checks, and she did have a few thousand dollars in the bank that they were then able to access, and they were able to help her, and, um, then I, uh, they said she decided after, like, getting things resolved that she wanted to continue living with us. She, you know, she must have had some mental illness, you know, she wasn't completely capable, and she wanted to continue to, to live with them and help out The Giving Tree and, um, pay a little bit of rent to live there and then, and then help and serve. And so, I went down later, we did take our youth down to the, their Feedlot, which was The Giving Tree Feedlot, and we had a service project where they served, and she got to introduce me to Jackie, and we got to hug and kind of reunite, and um, Yeah, never forgotten it. It was just a tiny little thing I had done right, really, and I was in over my head, but to be able to figure out how that tiny little thing really did make a difference in one person's life, um, has been kind of transformational for me.

Julie Rose: In what way? Why do you think so much about this particular thing that happened?

Rachel Scholes: Because you don't usually know what the little things you do, what the end of the story is, if it made a difference. Was it worth that time? Was it worth me spending my entire morning all the way to pickup time? Was it worth me, I don't wanna say losing that day, but right, losing the things I would've done? Was it worth it? Did it make a difference? Did God see my, my contribution? Was that consecrated for her good, for my good? And I felt like that was a message to me, like, "Yes, those little things you do, like, I know right now in your life," I felt like God was talking to me. "I know that you can only do little things right now." Like, I couldn't do big things. I couldn't, at the time, go and mentor refugees. I, I did that later, but at the time, I couldn't do that. I couldn't get a job as a teacher teaching math and physics right then, which I had wanted to do, but I couldn't. I was in over my head with that many children, and I could just serve in little ways as they presented themselves to me, and as I took that opportunity to do it, and so it just kinda gave me that push. "Yeah, keep doing those little things. It's okay."

Julie Rose: What do you get from, from service? Why is it that you, you want to do it even when it's hard?

Rachel Scholes: I feel like that's why we're here on Earth. Like, that, that is all of our calling. As you experience suffering, either your own suffering or others, and as, as, as a woman of faith, and I am, and I, I'm a believer in, in a God that, that directs and, and knows what's going on, you have to really make sense of suffering. Like, "Why does a God who is capable of doing anything allow suffering?" And the only thing that makes sense to me is so that I will act like God to relieve the suffering of other people, and that I will then form bonds and connections with them of love through what I have done. And I've been both the recipient of wonderful outreaches and love, right, and I've been able to do it myself, and it, I, it, I don't know, it's just, it's been soul enlarging.

Julie Rose: Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your story. I feel I'm, I'm feeling really inspired and humbled by the perspective that you shared, um, and I'm just really grateful that you've shared this story with us today.

Rachel Scholes: Thank you. Thanks for having me, letting me, letting me share it.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. I have personally found that serving others is often uncomfortable and inconvenient, and so a lot of times I talk myself out of it, which is why Rachel's story is so inspiring to me. She didn't know how to help Jackie, she just knew that she needed to stop and try.Well, I'd love to know how you are lighting the world with your own acts of service this holiday season. Email uncomfy@byu.edu and be sure to check out lighttheworld.org for more great ideas. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.