After repossessing an elderly couple’s car in Illinois, Jim Ford decided to pay off the debt and return the 1998 Buick back to the owners. “When I got home that night, I said to myself, ‘They are a real nice elderly couple. I gotta do something. I can’t just take their car,’ ” Mr Ford recently told the Chicago Sun-Times.

The 41-year-old repo man tried and failed to get a local bank to finance the car, then, he decided to set up a GoFundMe account to pay for the vehicle. With the help of friends in the auto industry, it only took one night for the campaign to raise $3,500.