Living in Bakersfield, California and two hours away from Dodger Stadium, lifelong Dodger fan and season ticket holder Kendrea LeRoy just simply cannot make it to every Dodgers home game, this despite her passion to do so.

“I’ve been a season ticket holder going on five years,” said LeRoy. “I grew up watching and going to games with my dad, a tradition that continued until he died in 2014. And now I now continue that tradition with my own children.”

When the 43-year-old mother of two – 18-year-old Kyra and 15-year-old Ian – can’t make it to the games, she puts her tickets up for sale on StubHub.

…and then Hurricane Maria struck the tiny island nation of Puerto Rico.

“This morning I received an email at work informing us that our Marketing Director Rafael, who is a fantastic guy and who is from Puerto Rico, was told that his father had died the night Hurricane Maria made landfall,” LeRoy said. “Rafael and his sister found a flight to Puerto Rico and they left to go find their mom.”

But Kendra’s coworker isn’t the only one affected by the near total devastation that Hurricane Maria caused to Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory … not by a long stretch. In fact, as of this writing, at least 16 people are confirmed dead as a result of the category 4 hurricane, with the devastation being described as “apocalyptic.”

The devastation from Hurricane Maria will be felt for years in Puerto Rico.
(Photo credit – Dennis M Rivera Pichardo – The Washington Post)

As Dodger fans well know, outfielder Kiké Hernandez is from Puerto Rico and he and his fiancée Mariana P. Vicente immediately began fundraising efforts to help their homeland. Seeing this and realizing the pain and suffering of so many, LeRoy offered up her four season seats to Monday night’s game against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium to Kiké and Mariana to use however they saw fit to help raise money for Kiké’s homeland.

When word of Kendrea’s generous offer reached Kiké and Mariana (via Instagram and Twitter), the popular Dodgers outfielder decided to spice up the deal by adding pre-game batting practice passes onto the field, four personally autographed baseballs, an autographed bat and Hernandez’s game-worn jersey from that night’s game to be included with Kendrea’s tickets in an on-line auction on Instagram – a sweet deal any way you slice it.

“Kiké’s fiancée Mariana helped coordinate this and made it happen,” LeRoy said. “She reached out to Kiké and has been the one coordinating things we me. He’s got himself a good one!”

The on-line auction went off without a hitch … or so everyone thought.

“The person who won the auction flaked out,” LeRoy said. “Fortunately, the runner-up in the auction agreed to step up and honor their bid to save the fundraising efforts.”

That runner-up is yet another lifelong Dodger fan and season ticket holder, 48-year-old Claudia Leal of Downey, California, who was informed of the failed on-line auction by her young son Noah. It turns out that when Noah learned that the auction winner had failed to honor his bid, he contacted Mariana via Instagram and informed her that his mom would still honor her initial second highest bid even though the auction deadline had passed.

“That was really nice of them to bid on the tickets and then honor their bid even after the highest bidder flaked out,” said an extremely grateful Kendrea LeRoy. “Kiké and Mariana are bringing out the best in people. It’s nice to see kindness still exists.”

(L to R) Adan Franco, Noah Franco, Kiké Hernandez, Andrew Chavez and Claudia Leal.
(Photo credit Ron Cervenka)

Noah Franco, Mariana P. Vicente and Adan Franco with Kiké’s autographed bat.
(Photo courtesy of Noah Franco)

But wait… there’s more!

As if Claudia Leal hadn’t already done enough.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” Kendrea texted to ThinkBlueLA, shortly before first pitch. “Claudia gave the seats she had won away to some young men who would never have the opportunity to sit there.”

Why on earth would lifelong Dodger fan and season ticket holder Claudia Leal of Downey, California do such an enormously generous thing on top of her already tremendous generosity, you ask? Because Claudia Leal is a lifelong Dodger fan and season ticket holder … she already had tickets to the game. This wasn’t about tickets or even about a Dodger game at all. This was about human kindness and an unselfish willingness to step up and help people in desperate need.

God Bless You Kendrea LeRoy and Claudia Leal. God Bless You indeed.