‘It stopped a church from burning down’: Dog Walker responds to fire alarm, saves entire neighborhood, and walks away unnoticed

A person was walking a dog along Dawley, Telford. And then he spotted the storied Restaurant 1840 with a small fire that’s building inside, so he tripped the alarm to wake up the owners and just disappeared before anyone could thank him.

The restaurant is also prime property, so if it had gone up in flames — it wouldn’t be the only casualty, historic buildings going as far back as the mid 19th Century would have been lost to the sands of time. But for the unassuming dog walker, the only thing he saw was tea towels on fire inside a closed Restaurant 1840. He wasn’t thinking about the big picture.

So he entered to check if there’s anything he could do, he ended up triggering the alarm and woke up Jelly Tench — the owner of the restaurant. A delighted Tench said that she’s grateful. Tench showed her appreciation saying, “There are so few people that would stop and try and do something in that moment. He thought they were the security alarms going off and he thought somebody was robbing the place, so he did come and make sure there was nothing he could do.”

Tench started a campaign on social media trying to find this good Samaritan. And considering the restaurant is just the 19th Century Methodist — which does have cultural cache and would have burnt down without him, support on Facebook to find him grew and grew.

BBC reports the community soon was able to find the good Samaritan. Tench told the publication, “That single action, it stopped a church from burning down, we are so incredibly grateful for what he’s done.” The good Samaritan has since been invited to the restaurant to enjoy a meal. Of course, on the house. That is the least Tench could do.

When society is functioning as it should — situations like this get common. As Tench said, the normal assumption these days is that someone would be in a position like that and walk away. After all, if there’s anything we can learn from social media these days, it’s the world has probably never been this polarized. Even the Twitter (now X) chatbot is somehow denying the holocaust. So it would be understandable if you were just cynical and assume nobody can help if there’s nothing in it for them.

But this is not the only time a good Samaritan has just come from nowhere to help someone out of the goodness of their heart. An older resident of a Long Island assisted living facility, recently got lost from his guides in Queens, New York City during a Halloween trip. To make matters worse, he also had cognitive difficulties and was non-verbal, so he couldn’t explain to people his situation. For 3 days, he survived on nothing but candy. It took one person to just call the police after they saw him in a concerning take. 3 days worth of passer-by foot traffic did nothing. Ultimately that call is what got the man to safety.

Kindness is a core tenet of modern day civilization. Those like these two who find a way to express it as often as they can are the most important people in society.