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Viral Moment - Rebecca Mehra's Act Of Kindness 'A Simple, Tender Moment'

Published by
DyeStat.com   Mar 18th 2020, 5:29pm
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Viral Moment

DyeStat story by Dave Devine

_____________

It was a simple trip to the store.

Rebecca Mehra, a professional runner sponsored by Oiselle, needed a few items from the Safeway in Bend, Oregon.

Crossing the parking lot on a Wednesday afternoon, she was in her own world. Mulling, perhaps, her work at the mayor’s office, suddenly busy with a public health crisis unfolding; the spate of track meet cancellations impacting her spring racing plans; the possibility that the few items she actually needed might not even be on the shelves. A fool’s errand, maybe, but still worth checking.

A quick trip — in and out.

This was before her Twitter account exploded from 600 followers to more than 8,500 in the span of three days.

Before the local newspaper, which would typically be covering her boss, Bend mayor Sally Russell, devoted a lengthy feature to Mehra, the 25-year-old mayor’s assistant. 

Before Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, gave her a shout-out on social media.

Before Ellen DeGeneres did.

Before CNN called to slot her for an interview.

Just a typical day: Mehra arrowing toward the supermarket doors with a plan in mind.

Which is when she heard a voice calling from across the parking lot.

mayor

In the summer of 2018, when Rebecca Mehra was contemplating a move to Bend to join the Oiselle-supported team known as Littlewing Athletics, she was excited to train under fellow Stanford alum Lauren Fleshman, but uncertain about the town’s central Oregon location.

An international relations major as an undergrad, she also pursued a Master’s in communication, with a focus on political communication, while still at Stanford. Knowing her professional running wouldn’t be a full-time occupation, she wondered what else she might find to occupy her time in Bend.

Fleshman connected her with Sally Russell, a city councilor planning to campaign that fall to become the city’s first mayor since 1928. (The city has been governed by the council, only, for nearly a century). An initial meeting between Russell and Mehra quickly led to an offer to assist with the fledgling campaign, which soon morphed into a position as communications director.

In a whirlwind run-up to the November 2018 election, Mehra faced a steep, two-month learning curve that exposed her to everything from crafting campaign talking points to organizing rallies, managing social media to fielding press inquiries.

By the time Russell claimed a decisive victory in early November, Mehra had proven so adept at her job that the new mayor asked the recent Bend transplant to remain on as a special assistant.

Mehra was elated to accept Russell’s offer. 

“She’s wonderful,” Mehra says. “I’ve been so lucky to work for such a great public servant.”

The behind-the-scenes political work has proven the perfect balance for Mehra’s “other” day job — training with an elite group of women under Fleshman’s empowering mentorship.

A California state champion and three-time Nike Cross Nationals finalist while in high school, Mehra had struggled through an up-and-down career at Stanford, managing three All-America finishes around a frustrating succession of injuries. She began to gain some traction as a post-collegian, first as a Oiselle-sponsored member of the Strava Track Club in the Bay Area, and then as a mid-distance runner for the Littlewing Athletics group.

Fleshman, Mehra says, “gets” her.

Drawing on a wealth of experience from her own decorated professional career, Fleshman challenges Mehra to push her limits and hone her mental approach in ways Mehra hadn’t expected.

“It’s definitely uplifting,” she says, “and it’s even more uplifting when you get on the starting line and you feel like you have this army of women behind you.”

Buoyed by that support, Mehra recorded one personal best after another as her 2019 campaign drew to a close.

She lowered her 1,500-meter PR from 4:11.97 to 4:08.14, her 800-meter best from 2:05.81 to 2:02.55, was an 800-meter finalist at the USATF Outdoor Championship, and wrapped up her season on the podium next to Jenny Simpson and Elinor Purrier at the New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile.

While she points to a number of factors contributing to her 2019 resurgence, Mehra circles back tellingly to that army of women, and more specifically her tight-knit training group in a city that once gave her pause, but she now calls home.

“A large part of the success I had last year was having people that, no matter the result, were going to give me a hug and tell me they love me.”

fifth

Where was the voice coming from?

Mehra scanned the Safeway parking lot, trying to discern the source. 

“I was totally in the zone,” she recalls, “distracted and focused on getting my groceries — you know, get in and get out — and I hear a voice saying, ‘Hey! Hey you.’ And I turned to the right and saw an older woman waving to me from her car.”

Which meant Mehra had a small decision to make: walk over to the blue sedan to discover why she was being hailed, or hustle into the store and ignore the person shouting through a barely lowered car window?

“You definitely have to think about it when someone is yelling to you from a car you don’t recognize,” she says. “And then make a concerted decision to walk over and talk to them.”

Mehra approached the car.

“I figured she needed something, or maybe something was happening. I had no idea, so I went right over.”

Reaching the side of the car, she discovered a couple in their 80s who said they’d been sitting in their car for some time, trying to decide if it was safe to enter the store. They were keenly aware of concerns about the Novel Coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on older citizens. 

The city of Bend had registered their first confirmed case earlier that day, and the couple had heard about that, too.

Through the barely cracked window, the woman told Mehra that after reaching the store she and her husband had been seized with uncertainty, and eventually began hoping to find a trustworthy shopper they might ask to gather their groceries.

“They were just nervous,” Mehra says. “You could tell they were having a really hard time. They’d been waiting for a person to come and help.”

The woman, near tears, spoke hesitantly through the slender opening. 

“She asked me if I’d be willing to go in and get their groceries.”

Mehra assured her it would be no problem, she’d be happy to do it, and the window lowered a few more inches.

The woman slipped Mehra a handwritten grocery list and a $100 bill.

It was a list similar to those being drawn up all around the United States in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Toilet paper. Canned goods. Soap.

Lysol or hand sanitizer — although Mehra wouldn’t find any in the store.

A few additional non-perishables and some small home goods.

“Nothing extraordinary,” Mehra recalls, “not that many things.”

The entire list amounted to a single bag of groceries, which she proceeded to pay for and deliver back to the couple’s car. She slipped the change through the lowered window, exchanged a few pleasantries and said goodbye.

It never occurred to her to ask for contact information, although she wished later that she’d asked for a phone number so she could follow up about future needs.

The only photo Mehra captured from the afternoon was the same picture many Americans were preserving for posterity last week, a record of life in a time of pandemic: a supermarket aisle bordered by vacant, bereft shelves.

When she later texted her boyfriend about the afternoon, mentioning the story about the couple, he suggested she share it on her social media accounts.

Mehra, who admits with a laugh that she only created her Twitter account in July 2019 out of a sense that, as a professional runner, she should increase her presence on social media, initially demurred.

“And he was like, ‘No, you have to tweet that.’”

So, she did.

That was on Wednesday evening.

If it was, at the time, just a small dose of positivity nudged out into the world, it was also a minor act of vulnerability. A little bit of heart-on-sleeve sharing that risked the inevitable negativity from keyboard cynics and disparaging trolls.

But that wasn’t a big concern. How many people would actually see it, anyway?

By early Thursday morning, the tweet had gathered over 50,000 Likes and been retweeted more than 10,000 times. Later that afternoon, the number of Likes had tripled and the retweets had ballooned to well over 30,000.

The numbers only grew more implausible from there.

At a time when nearly every Twitter feed was dominated by ominous news of closings and cancellations, projections about infection rates and rants about hoarding, here was a shard of light and decency that seemed to resonate — first nationally, and then globally.

“It just felt like such a normal, everyday human experience,” Mehra says. “It wasn’t anything extraordinary, which is why it feels so crazy that it’s gotten so much traction.”

By the end of the week, her tweet had accumulated more than 32 million impressions, a metric Mehra admits she needed assistance to identify.

“Like I said,” she laughs, “I really didn’t know much about Twitter at all, so I’ve been asking a lot of people who know more than me for help over the last couple of days.”

On one hand, Mehra is at a loss to explain — or even grasp — the enormity of the tweet’s reach and impact. On the other, she has no trouble imagining why it spoke to people hungry for connection and positivity in a time of mandated “social distancing.”

“It’s been such a crazy time with all the news,” she says, “that this was highlighting two people’s real-life situation, and serving as a reminder for everyone else to look out for the neighbors in their community.”

If the tweet’s initial virality bewildered Mehra, the array of inspired responses found in the thread’s comments has rendered her nearly speechless.

People she’s never met, saying they’ve been motivated to stand outside grocery stores to assist elderly customers.

A woman who started a neighborhood meal delivery service.

Someone who developed an app to connect people concerned about shopping with those who could shop for them.

Adult children calling or visiting their elderly parents, some for the first time in years, because of Mehra.

And not just in the United States, all over the world.

“I’ve seen it translated into a bunch of different languages,” Mehra says. “It’s been completely overwhelming, but also amazing that a story like this got through. So many people have reached out and said, ‘I decided to go check on my neighbor’ — or my landlord, or my grandparents — ‘because I haven’t done that, or thought about that, until now.’”

As the tweet continued to spread and draw attention, Mehra herself received additional attention; first locally, and eventually from national networks, newspapers and websites.

Last Friday she was interviewed live on CNN.

A few hours later, her story was elbowing for space on the CNN website alongside a headline about the President declaring a national emergency.

All the while, she’s been attempting to help the mayor of her own city manage Bend’s Coronavirus response.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been the best employee in the last few days,” she says.

When the city’s first confirmed case was announced March 11, the same Wednesday as Mehra’s shopping trip, Russell called Mehra early that morning requesting help organizing a press conference. In the days since, Mehra has been inundated with emails, and not just from CNN booking agents.

“Mostly people who are scared,” she says. “Citizens that don’t know what to do, and I’m just doing my best to help Sally respond to all of that.”

Finding herself in front of the camera — or being tweeted at by celebrities — wasn’t part of the response plan.

When Mehra’s Twitter thread started to go viral Thursday morning, local news reporters began calling Russell in an effort to reach her assistant.

“She was the one,” Mehra says, “connecting them to me.”

Once she realized her thread was exploding in ways she never could have imagined, Mehra didn’t pivot to the predictable follow-up for viral tweets:

Gosh, this blew up — LOL. Here’s my Soundcloud.

She offered no link to a Patreon page or a GoFundMe site or a personal blog.

Simply this, a sincere exhortation to be mindful and kind:

This is not about me, or anyone in particular, it is about the people all over the world who feel hopeless against this virus. Now is the time to reach out to those in your community who may need help or feel forgotten. #kindnesskillscovid

Pressed to explain that positivity, her optimism in a time of simmering dread, she points to the unexpected fit of her living situation in Bend, the supportive relationship with Mayor Russell, and the big-hearted generosity she finds in her Littlewing training group.

“I don’t know how I got so lucky to walk into this amazing situation,” she says. “To think that I considered not living in Bend because it felt too small is laughable now.” 

That moment in the parking lot?

It felt small, too.

A hushed, papery plea over a barely lowered window. 

A hasty assent to a minor inconvenience.

Fear and trust.

Generosity and gratitude.

A single connection between strangers in the midst of a global pandemic. A dose of positivity on an otherwise brutal day. Somehow all of that rippled out and resonated in ways Mehra never could have imagined.

“I feel like all of the news I’ve seen over the past few days has been this and that is cancelled,” Mehra says. “States of emergency, people are upset, universities are sending their students home — it feels like complete mayhem. And when that couple asked me to get the groceries for them, it was really a moment that brought me back to reality.”

Like every other runner, from preps to pros, Mehra’s current reality also includes discerning a path forward on a landscape largely devoid of competitions.

Asked what she’s needed to recalibrate as the cancellations pile up, Mehra draws an audible breath.

“A whole lot.”

She rattles off a schedule of planned events that are no longer being offered, how she intended to open her season at Mt. SAC, compete in some smaller domestic meets, focus on Stanford’s Payton Jordan Invitational — “My alma mater, I love that meet” — and then, possibly, a short European schedule in May. 

All of it now erased from the calendar.

“I think everything will be in flux,” she says, “until there’s a decision made about the Olympic Trials. And eventually, the Olympics.”

Last week, the organizers of those 2020 Olympic Trials released a statement indicating that, as of now, the event is proceeding as planned. But in a nod to uncertainty, they said a planned March 16 release of ticket inventory would be postponed.

Mehra, as well as anyone, knows how fluid everything remains. 

“We’ll do our best to make it work,” she says, “but that’s all you can really do — right?”

She’s referring to athletes with hopes pinned to the Trials, but it could easily be mistaken for a statement to a wider audience.

An admonition for this moment.

“We’re all divided in so many ways,” she says, “and then suddenly there’s this virus that hits, and it does disproportionately affect some more than others, but it’s affecting everyone. It affects everyone’s lives.”

That’s true whether you’re in Bend or Boston, Bergamo or Beijing.

San Francisco or the Safeway parking lot.

“In a lot of ways, it was just a very simple, tender moment,” Mehra says, attempting, one more time, to explain the tweet’s unexpected reach. “I think maybe that’s part of what’s resonating with folks on social media.”

She hesitates a beat, admits that she doesn’t want to overstate the impact it’s had on her. Decides to go ahead with what she’d planned to say.

Risk being vulnerable again.

“It just brings me back to being human.”



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