In a world where it feels like everyone's out for themselves, one man named Leo has restored our faith in humanity - and also in the power of a well-timed, emotionally devastating compliment.

Our story begins with a university graduation in Birmingham, coinciding with the arrival of Storm Goretti, which sounds like a particularly aggressive Italian aunt but is actually just a blizzard. The graduate, our narrator, wisely chose public transport over driving, bringing her mum along for the festivities. The ceremony was a success. The bus ride home? Less so.

About a kilometer from home, the bus gave up the ghost, and everyone piled out into what our narrator describes as 'like The Day After Tomorrow out there.' Now, for a young, able-bodied person, that's a nuisance. For her mum, late 60s and struggling to walk, it was a crisis. Taxis were nowhere to be seen, and passing cars were having none of it. Enter Leo.

Leo was sitting in his BMW outside a pub, presumably waiting for a friend and minding his own business, when our narrator, with her mum on the verge of a panic attack, started waving frantically at his passenger-side window. To his credit - and our collective relief - he agreed to drive them home. He was initially annoyed, which is fair. Being voluntold to ferry two strangers through a blizzard is not in most people's job descriptions.

The drive was a white-knuckle affair: cars skidding everywhere, a five-minute trip stretching to 40. Mum's English was limited, so our narrator navigated, and somewhere along the way, Leo's annoyance melted into something like empathy. As they got out, he dropped a line that would stick with her: 'I can see how hard it was to help your mum today. And I hope that if I'm ever in the same position, I will step up the way you did.'

That's the kind of parting shot that leaves you staring at the ceiling at 3am. Leo didn't just get them home safely - he gave our narrator a gift she didn't know she needed: validation. Her mum, who had mental health issues and often underestimated her, got to see her daughter in action, capable and in control. It was a pivotal moment in their relationship, and tragically, a timely one - Mum passed away a month later.

So here's to Leo: a man who, in the middle of a blizzard, managed to be both a chauffeur and an emotional support human. It takes a rare kind of person to step up like that, and an even rarer one to know exactly what to say. We'd buy him a drink, but he's probably busy being a guardian angel somewhere.