Autistic teen gets vacuum demo birthday surprise

Mary Bowerman | USA TODAY Network

Dylan Johnson has been enamored with vacuum cleaners since he was a toddler, his mom says.

So it was fitting for Dylan, who has autism, to celebrate his 14th birthday last weekend with a special guest – a vacuum salesman, WTVR reports.

With plans to order a Kirby vacuum cleaner cake replica, Jodie Greene sent an e-mail to the makers of the Kirby vacuum cleaner asking if they would send salesmen to demo her son's favorite product at his party, according to the station.

"As the mother of a special needs child, it is so hard to find things to make my son happy," Greene wrote in an e-mail to The Kirby Company, provided on the station's website.

Greene offered to pay for the demo and said she was not going to purchase a vacuum cleaner.

The company decided to send Kirby salesman Al Archie to demo the product.

"He knew more about the Kirby than I did," Archie told the station. "I have never experienced anything like that."

At the end of the demonstration, Archie gave Dylan a Kirby vacuum cleaner. Greene told the station there "wasn't a dry eye in the house."

"I'm going to have the cleanest carpets in Chesterfield County," Greene told WTVR.

A picture tweeted by WRIC-TV in Richmond, Va., shows Dylan trying the Kirby vacuum out at his birthday party.

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