Bell Employees 

Sandy Crosby, Amanda Atkins 

St. Cloud and Bloomington, MN

Recipient

Taylor Johnson

The Need

When you grow up together as best friends, those connections run deep. So when Amanda Atkins heard her friend Taylor had been in a motorcycle accident in Florida, it was time to help.

Amanda and Taylor had been besties since high school.

Amanda was 15 when she wheeled another friend in a shopping cart, through the fast-food drive-through where Taylor was working.

“My friend thought he was so cute,” Amanda says with a smile. Taylor and Amanda have been best friends ever since.

“I pretty much grew up with them, you know, all through high school,” says Taylor. “I love all those guys to death. They’re awesome.”

Amanda’s Bell Bank Mortgage colleague, Sandy Crosby, also has a close personal connection to Taylor, calling him her “bonus child.”

“At 16 years old, he was struggling with his family,” she recalls, “so he actually lived with us for a while.”

Last year, after Taylor had moved to Florida, he was cycling on the freeway when he had to brake fast to avoid hitting a vehicle that had braked suddenly in front of him.

“I got into the ‘death wobble,’” he remembers, “ … and it ended up throwing me off the bike. Rolling across the free way was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever felt.”

The Impact

After surgery to fix a broken heel, Taylor had more than a month of no weight-bearing at all, followed by another four to six weeks in a walking boot. His struggles were compounded by the fact he’d been living in Florida for such a short time, he didn’t qualify for disability. Amanda was ready to help with her Pay It Forward funds, and even traveled to Florida to help Taylor out. Sandy, too, stepped in.

“He didn’t have the money to pay his rent, he didn’t have the money to pay his medical, so I thought, ‘Let’s try to pool our funds and see if we could get more for him,’” Sandy says.

Arriving in Florida, Amanda presented Taylor with $1,000 – knowing there could be more help coming from other Bell team members.

“At that point the ‘pool’ was still open, so we didn’t even know how much he was going to end up getting,” Amanda explains.

It ended up totaling $5,000.

“It’s means a lot,” Sandy says, and Taylor adds, “It means more than I can thank you guys for.”

The funds helped Taylor stay afloat financially while he healed – and as he puts it, gave him “that bridge to get from one part of life to the next.”

For Taylor, Amanda and Sandy, there are sure to be big hugs when next they see each other.

“Words can’t even describe how blessed I feel to be able to pay it forward to someone that I have seen through his life having major challenges,” says Sandy. 

“That just makes you feel so good to know that you have made a difference in someone else's life.”

Through the Pay It Forward program, Bell gives employees money each year to donate to people in need and causes they care about.