Washington Redskins running backs Keith Marshall and Rob Kelley were at a GameStop in Sterling when a 10-year-old boy named Jaden came in to ask about the price of an Xbox.
The players noticed Jaden’s Colin Kaepernick jersey and complimented him on it before overhearing the boy talking about how he was saving up to buy a video game console. That’s when Marshall asked Kelley if he wanted to help pitch in to buy the console for the boy.
“I was cool with it,” Kelley said. “I wish someone would’ve done something like that for me when I was growing up. His family is probably able to do whatever they want, but everybody is not able to have the stuff that we have the luxury of having. … To make an impact on somebody, I have no problem with it.”
When the players approached Jaden with their offer, the stunned little boy rushed off to go tell his grandmother, Saundra Watts, who at first thought someone was messing with her grandson.
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“The first thing I’m thinking is there’s some pedophile trying to buy my grandson an Xbox,” she said. “So I’m like, I’m going to bust up in there and bust his bubble.”
But then when she arrived at the GameStop to meet the two men in shorts who offered to buy the Xbox, she was stunned. “I was like, ‘Really?’ Now mind you, I didn’t know they were Redskins, and neither did Jaden,” she recalled.
The group of them exchanged hugs, took pictures, and even swapped phone numbers before leaving the store.
“Jaden flew on cloud nine to the car,” Saundra said. “The next morning, he woke up and looked at me and said, ‘Nana, I had a dream that I was in a GameStop and two Redskins players bought me an Xbox.’ I said, ‘That wasn’t a dream, you dodo, that really happened.’ It was un-be-lievable. Unbelievable. He’s just such a good kid and it was just such a blessing. It was just so wonderful, the experience of a lifetime.”
“I will never forget that,” Jaden said.