What goes around comes around — and in the case of 50-year-old mechanic John Shu, it's kindness that makes the world go round. When he met 32-year-old Jaycie Tay in 2013 at a chance encounter, the duo struck up a friendship that led to him offering her about $6,000 to pay for her diploma. Her back story included incarceration for drug offences and dropping out of school, but the twice-divorced mum of four — whose previous jobs included low-paying positions as a waitress and a retail assistant — wanted to get a diploma at Kaplan Singapore for a better shot at giving her kids a good future.
Except she didn't have the money to pay for the course fees. So Shu, whose monthly income was just over $2,000, gave her what he had. He claimed that him and his wife, who worked as a hawker, could live on their income.