The other night, TikToker Dillon White (@dadchats) received a message from someone asking if he lived in Illinois around 2008 and attended college just outside of Chicago. He replied yes and asked if something was wrong.
The woman who messaged him stated that she recognized him by his laugh. Then, she proceeded to ask him if he remembered a specific instance that happened on a flight from Chicago.
After she told the whole story, Dillon realized that he knew this person. In 2008, he was flying home from Chicago to the East Coast, and there was a woman sitting in front of him.
“Sometimes, you can just pick up a feeling that something is wrong,” he said. “There was this man talking to her, and he seems like he might have had too much to drink.”
“And you can tell by the way that she’s interacting with him and sort of curtly responding to his questions, which were many, that she was super, super uncomfortable.”
So, Dillon decided to swoop in to rescue her. He stood up and pretended that he knew her as a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time. He invited her to sit with him because there was an open seat next to him.
When the plane landed, they went their separate ways and hadn’t talked until this most recent message. The woman explained that she had taken a page out of his book and did the same thing for someone else.
In 2010, she was on a flight from London to New York City when she witnessed a very similar situation unfolding behind her. She invited the uncomfortable woman to sit next to her, and they ended up talking the entire flight.
Once they landed, they walked together to pick up their bags and exchanged phone numbers.
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The woman she rescued was picked up from the airport by her brother. The woman told her brother the whole story, and a week later, he texted the woman who saved his sister.
They dated for years and are now married. So, Dillon turned out to be an accidental matchmaker!
Many TikTok users praised him for standing up for women during a time when social media wasn’t prevalent, while others shared instances in which they were accidental matchmakers themselves.
“So, basically, you’ve always been a great person. Looking out for women wasn’t even talked about in 2008, yet you still had her back,” pointed out one user.
“I legit just got a message like this! Twenty years ago, I forced my regular at the bar to come with me to a two-step class. Boom…20 years later, he is married to his partner he met that night!” exclaimed another.
“This is wild! It’s so cool to hear how your random act of kindness had this ripple effect. We don’t get to hear about these very often,” commented a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
