Boy Uses PlayStation Money to Teach Neighbors About Fire Safety

 

(L-R) Hector Montoya, Peyton Harder, and Ashton Harder (Photo: Courtesy of Ashton Harder) 

When you’re a kid, having enough money to buy your favorite toy is a big deal. So it’s pretty amazing that a 9-year-old boy dropped his plan to buy himself a PlayStation 4 in order to purchase 100 smoke detectors for his neighbors.

Hector Montoya of Grand Prairie, Texas, has spent the past few years saving his allowance and birthday money. After accumulating  $305, he decided he would purchase the $400 game console when he had socked away enough cash. However, in late January, while watching the news, he learned about a mother and son who had died in a house fire. “Hector couldn’t understand why the family didn’t have smoke detectors,” Tanah Montoya, Hector’s mother, tells Yahoo Shine. “He said, ‘But mom, we have one in our home.’”

A few days later, Hector approached his mother with an idea. “He wanted to use his savings to buy 300 smoke detectors for people who didn’t own them and asked me to drive him to the store to buy them.”

The money Hector had was enough to purchase 100 smoke detectors, which he and his mother planned to distribute around their neighborhood. However, Hector’s grandmother, who works across the street from the Grand Prairie fire station, decided to contact the department for help. “On Friday, the fireman teamed up with Hector and took him to each house to install the detectors,” says Montoya. “He got to use a power tool, which he was excited about.” She added that many of the homes they visited didn’t have the two working smoke detectors required by law, including some homes occupied by elderly people.


Dallas-Fort Worth news affiliate NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth covered the story of Hector and the fire department’s mission and, later that night, the Montoyas received a phone call from the news station. “They informed us that two teenagers, a brother and sister, had seen the news story and wanted to purchase the PlayStation 4 for Hector,” says Montoya.

The young  good Samaritans were Ashton Harder, 20, and his sister, 14-year-old Peyton, of nearby Allen, Texas. “We were so amazed that a 9-year-old would be so selfless that we decided to reward him,” Ashton tells Yahoo Shine. “We wanted to donate the console anonymously, but the news station invited us to the Montoya home.” So, on Sunday, the siblings showed up on Hector’s doorstep with their gift, along with $150 extra to purchase additional smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to give out.

“Hector was so happy and surprised because he had planned to start saving all over again in order to purchase his PlayStation,” says Montoya. On Tuesday, Hector and Ashton launched a GoFundMe page called Hector's Detectors where people can donate money so that the pair can purchase more detectors for members of their communities. They even plan to visit elderly people to teach them about the importance of fire safety.

“It’s really cool, and I can’t wait to play racing and Lego games on my PlayStation,” Hector tells Yahoo Shine. "And I'm going to continue saving my money for smoke detectors."