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‘Restored my faith in humanity’: Local family on receiving end of generous gift from strangers

SCITUATE, Mass. — Jennifer Canelos is confined to a wheelchair after suffering a traumatic brain injury. She was driving down Booth Hill Road by Route 3A in Scituate in August when another car crashed into her.

“For the first three months she was in pretty much a vegetative state,” said Hannah McGrath, Jennifer’s sister.

McGrath said Jen, who is 36, is now paralyzed and, after spending months in rehab, she just returned home a couple of weeks ago.

“We don’t know if she’ll ever walk or if she’ll ever speak,” McGrath said.

McGrath said they were able to gather donations to make their parents’ house handicap accessible, but they still needed a handicap van. So she posted about it on Facebook, and someone connected them to another family who was selling their van after their father died.

“She called me back the next day because it’s her father’s van and her father was a quadriplegic and he passed away in November,” McGrath said. “And she called me the next day and said me and my mom want to give you the van, and I just broke down in tears.”

The Griffiths family decided to gift their van to Jen’s family without even knowing them. McGrath said it’s life-changing for her sister.

“Now my sister can go down to the beach and watch the waves because the ocean’s her favorite place in the world,” McGrath said.

The family will be forever grateful for the act of kindness.

“It just kind of restored my faith in humanity, where I’ve much lost it the past few years, that there are still good people out there, and it also reminds me that we need to pay it forward in any way we can,” McGrath said.

To donate to Jennifer’s GoFundMe click here.