Five-year-old Prichard, AL native Austin Perine has been named one of CNN's most influential people of 2018!
"True happiness is when you know your child is becoming a good person," says his father T.J. Perine.
I first saw this little boy on NBC 15 and AL.com earlier in the year when Austin started passing out food to the homeless in Prichard and Mobile. He was 4 then. He just turned 5 on Christmas Eve, and you know what he wanted? You guessed it-- to feed the homeless!
He wears his little red cape and passes out food and his motto, "Show love."
Austin's father Terance Perine told NBC 15 News this idea sparked after watching Animal Planet on TV. Austin asked his father why a mother panda had left her cubs alone. "And I said, 'Well, I guess it's going to be homeless for a while,' and he said, 'Are people homeless?' and I said, 'Yeah, some of them.' And he asked me to take him to see a homeless person," said Perine.
They did just that. Father and son bought food for the homeless in Prichard. That experience launched a passion project for the 5-year-old who now helps the hungry wherever he goes, in Birmingham, Washington, Mobile, or Prichard.
We LOVE this story! We can all take a lesson from him for 2019, I know I will!
~Shelby
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