LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – What is usually a parent’s worst nightmare, ended a little differently on Monday night.
Eight-year-old Max was dropped off by the bus all by himself almost a mile from home just before 6 p.m., and then was met by a stranger.
Max’s bus stop is right on busy Taylorsville Road in Jeffersontown. When he was dropped off there, it was dark, raining, and his parents were nowhere in sight.
“We went to go pick up Max from Klondike Elementary, where he was supposed to be having robotics class,” Max’s dad Isaiah Holstein said. “I got there, things seemed off, people weren’t out waiting like they normally are, so I started wondering if robotics class was even going on.”
So instead, Max got on the bus to go home. Due to the mix-up, he wasn’t at the school when his dad came to pick him up.
“Max said he waited for me for a little while to see if I was going to show up before he left,” Holstein said. “And then once he realized I wasn’t coming, that’s when he started his journey home.”
Max knows his way home, but it’s nearly a mile away and requires crossing four lanes of traffic in the dark and the rain.
“My heart sank. I assumed things were going to be really bad. We hadn’t gone through anything like that with him. About the crosswalks and actually getting home,” Holstein said.
For a brief moment, every parent’s worst nightmare came true for Holstein.
Max met a stranger.
“A man helped him cross Taylorsville Road and walked him all the way home,” Holstein said.
A man who was standing in the front yard with Max when Holstein got home.
A man named John, which is the only thing they know about him, because as soon as the job was done, he walked off into the darkness without asking for anything in return.
Despite this happy ending, Holstein understands how bad things could’ve gone.
“We’re so lucky with the way things played out,” Holstein said. “Because you hear how kids go missing all the time. And for a stranger to see Max, see Max is confused and not sure where he is exactly, and to walk him all the way home, and then he walked off into the dark.”
Holstein doesn’t know anything about John or how to contact him, but he has a message for him.
“Thank you so much,” Holstein said. “And that doesn’t really do justice. I want to hug him honestly.”
Holstein says they’re working on getting a bus stop added at Max’s daycare so something like this doesn’t happen again.
JCPS said Transportation has not received a request from the family to move a bus stop to the daycare. They said a stop is closer to the home and that the Holstein family has been notified about it.
WAVE asked JCPS about this situation and what the protocol is with dropping kids off with no parent or guardian at the stop, and they said only early childhood and kindergarten s
