DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) — When a Florida woman kept dialing the wrong number, the man on the other end of the line decided to get to know her, and the decision has led to a friendship spanning two decades.
Years ago, Gladys Hankerson was trying to call her sister who lived in Maryland, but instead of dialing the area code 410, she dialed 401.
The mistake ended up connecting her to Mike Moffitt from Rhode Island, who said he was raised to always answer the phone.
“‘Oh sweetheart, I’ve got the wrong number,’ and hung up real quick,” Moffitt described. “[She] did that a couple times that day, then the next week, the same thing, maybe next month.”
Moffitt said one day when Hankerson called, he actually struck up a conversation.
“Finally I just grabbed it and said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, before you go, who are you, where are you from, what are you trying to do? And we started talking,” he said.
“I told him, ‘I’m sorry I was trying to call my sister,’ and he said, ‘This is Mike,'” Hankerson said. “I said my son passed away, and he said I’m so sorry, and he talked real nice to me, and I talked real nice to him, and after that I had his phone number, and I put it down on paper, and I always called him.”
Hankerson said Moffitt entered her life at a difficult time, when she was divorced and after she lost her son, but she said Moffitt always lifted her spirits.
“During that time I was downhearted, and he felt my sympathy and everything and lifted me up. He was real nice, you know?” she said.
When Moffitt and his family came down for the Thanksgiving holiday, he decided to visit Hankerson at her Delray Beach home.
“I just walked in and I said, ‘I’m Mike from Rhode Island,’ and she just threw her hands up and said, ‘I’m blessed,'” Moffitt said.
“Oh, it was such a great day. That was the happiest Thanksgiving there was. That made my day,” Hankerson said. “I wish more people could be like that, you know? That would be so nice. The world would be better too, people would be better.”
Moffitt said his and Hankerson’s friendship has lasted so long that he used to have a flip phone when she first called.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.