Joy Break: Homeless Man Doesn’t Ask for Food or Money, Just Wants Drivers to ‘Take a Resume’

By Nancy Flory Published on August 2, 2018

When we turn on our television or smart phones we are bombarded with news that brings us down. Where are all the good stories? Those stories are still there. Here’s one that we hope will bless you.

A homeless man stood at a California intersection holding a homemade sign as cars drove by. But this sign wasn’t asking for food or money. The college-educated man’s sign asked people to take a resume. Now the image a passerby took of him has gone viral.

A Big Dream

David Casarez received an education in management information systems at Texas A&M University. He first got a job as a web developer at General Motors. He had a dream of starting up his own tech company. So he cashed out his retirement account and moved from Texas to California.

It didn’t pan out. He ran out of cash in June. “I’d been living in my car for more than a year. No one was hiring. I had an interview with Apple in January, but the job was filled internally,” he told The New York Post. Casarez did some freelance work to help make ends meet.

Then his vehicle was repossessed. Now his bed is a bench at the city park.

A Make or Break Moment

Last Friday, he dressed in the best clothes he had and headed to the intersection with his sign and a stack of resumes. His sign read, “Homeless. Hungry 4 Success. Take A Resume.”

“It was basically a make-or-break moment. I wanted to keep my head up high, keep looking forward and see what opportunity would come next.” He thought that the intersection was his last stop. “If this didn’t work, I’d go back home and give up on my dream.”

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But it did work. He was standing on the median at an intersection for a couple of hours when Jasmine Scofield drove by. She stopped to ask if she could take his picture and post it online. He said yes.

“Today I saw this young homeless man asking for people to take a resume rather than asking for money,” Scofield tweeted. “Please RT so we can help David out!” The tweet has been retweeted almost 140,000 times and has been liked over 200,000 times. 

Since then, Casarez has received hundreds of job offers. “Google reached out to me. So many other companies. Pandora. A bunch of startups. A product manager from Bitcoin.com was wondering if I could work remotely or if I want to relocate to Tokyo. But tonight, I’ll be back on my bench in Rengstorff Park.”

He told The Post he was still in shock. “I wasn’t expecting that kind of response. It kinda blew up.”

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