Heroes Among Us: Cancer patient receives generous gift from car salesman

It’s been a tough few months for Lisa DeStella. She’s undergoing treatment for stage one cancer, and in late December, a drunk driver hit and totaled her car in a parking lot in Nicholasville.

After weeks of rental cars and bumming rides, she found a new car online.

“I kinda wanted him to go down on the price and he was like ‘no, I can’t really do that’ and I was like ‘man, I’ve got cancer!’ and that’s all I had to say, because he just went out of his way and said ‘you’ve gotta have this car!’”, says Lisa.

That man is Naim Mustafa – known as “Nick” to his friends, who had sympathy and wanted to help, taking $1,000 off the price of the car. Then, when there was an issue with the vehicle, offering to fix it at no charge.

“He’s fixing it for free and going out of his way to do such beautiful stuff”, Lisa said. “I don’t see much good kindness like this. I’m an RN and disabled now and I’ve seen the worst in people, but now I’m seeing the best of somebody.”

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“I came here 25 years ago. I love Kentucky. I look at Kentucky people as my kinfolks”, says Nick. “We try our best with everybody.”

But that’s only part of the story.

Nick is from Palestine and has had to endure reports of death within his family back home and constant messages of relatives in Gaza who are suffering.

“It’s really miserable. It’s really hard. It’s really hard. It’s locked down and no food”, he says. “I’ve lost a lot of family. I’ve lost two of my nephews in my hometown. One was 13, one was 16 years old. They was coming out of school when they got killed.”

An unspeakable grief. And Nick says that’s why he came to Lisa’s aid when she needed it.

“God send us to this planet to be his messengers and everybody’s a messenger. We need each other. Love each other – that’s what he want us to be”, Nick says.

“I’m not used to people being that nice to me”, admits Lisa. “It makes me pay it forward. It makes me want to do better things and be a better person and that’s because of Nick.”