The subway in New York City is not exactly known for being a place where acts of kindness takes place. That’s why Maria Lopez never forgot something beautiful that happened right before her eyes on a subway train six years ago.

Maria was on the train standing next to a flower vendor who was trying to sell roses when a young man in a business suit walked up to her. Maria thought he was going to haggle the flower lady, so she whipped out her phone in the hopes of helping the woman, but things ended up taking a very different turn than she expected.

“I looked at this woman and I felt really connected to her,” Maria recalled. “So I started shooting.”

The video opens with the man asking the flower lady about buying her roses.

“So, it would be 140 for everybody,” he said as he took out his wallet.

The flower woman was confused at first, as she did not understand what the man wanted to do initially. When he told her that he wanted to buy all of her flowers for $140, she made a “ha!” sound and asked, “Are you serious?”

The man said that he was very serious, but he had one simple request of her in return.

“You gotta do me a favor,” he told her. “You gotta give them out. Just give them to everybody, don’t sell any of them. Just give them away.”

“I promise,” the flower lady replied, her voice shaking with emotion.

“He was like an angel,” Maria said. “He just disappeared.”

The flower vendor was so overcome by emotion at the moment that she burst into tears.

“[I think] she started crying from the relief of someone actually being generous,” Maria said. “This one little gesture of humanity is so huge. It’s a testament to the lack of love and lack of generosity in the world. I think people are yearning for that.”

Maria went on to say that his act of kindness “changed the whole atmosphere of the train,” which is typically very tense.

“It was this amazing sense of us all being human beings,” she added.

We need more people in the world like this “angel” of a man! Let’s all pay it forward by performing a random act of kindness the next time we have the opportunity to do so.