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Toronto’s Max Sidorov has never met Karen Klein, a 68-year-old U.S. bus monitor mercilessly bullied by schoolchildren in a viral video, but because of him she’s poised to receive more than US$300,000.

Mr. Sidorov, once a bullied child himself, set up an online fundraising campaign Wednesday morning after being shocked at the treatment handed out to Ms. Klein, who makes US$15,000 a year. The video of her being harassed and taunted has been seen more than 1.6 million times.

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The aim was to raise US$5,000 to send Ms. Klein on a dream vacation, but by 9 p.m. Thursday his campaign had already garnered US$387,877.

“It is ridiculously more than I expected,” said Mr. Sidorov in an interview with the National Post. “I just had an idea. It’s the people who took it and ran with it.”

Mr. Sidorov, 25, a kinesiologist and nutritionist, added, “I really felt almost heartbroken to see that people would do such a thing to a nice lady. So, I just thought I had to do something about it.”