Internet “positive influencers” helped raise nearly $1.2 million for an 88-year-old veteran who worked five days a week at a supermarket, eventually allowing him to retire.
Ed Bambas originally retired from General Motors in 1999 but lost his pension when the company went bankrupt. He was working at a self-service checkout at a Meijer in Brighton, Michigan, when he caught the attention of Australian social media influencer Samuel Weidenhofer.
According to Weidenhofer, someone commenting on one of his videos mentioned an “82-year-old man” still working and helping customers.
As a result, Weidenhoff booked a flight to Michigan and worked with another influencer from Detroit, Mike McKinstry, to find Bambas.
“We walked around Major for about two hours and we were looking for this friendly, happy old man and we met Ed at the checkout and knew right away it was him,” McKinstry told Detroit’s WXYZ News.
Ed Bambas, 88, still works five days a week at Meijer supermarket in Brighton, Michigan (GoFundMe)
The interactive video posted to TikTok and Instagram quickly racked up millions of views, and Weidenhofer set up a GoFundMe fundraiser for Bambas.
The fundraiser surpassed its $1 million goal in less than 48 hours and is still on track, surpassing $1.2 million as of Wednesday.
In the viral video, Bambas explains that after completing his military service in the 1960s, he went to work for General Motors.
He retired in 1999, believing that he and his wife, Joan, could live comfortably on his pension.
“I feel comfortable. I feel like I’m on a stable financial footing. I own my home,” Bambas told reporters this week on WXYZ. “We don’t have any major concerns.”
However, following GM’s 2009 bankruptcy filing and subsequent reorganization, he said he lost his pension in 2012. Soon after, his wife fell ill.
“The thing that hurt me the most was when my wife got really sick, they took away the pension and they took away the health insurance.”
His wife died seven years ago, and “I’ve been trying to rebuild myself ever since,” he said.
“After my wife passed away, I didn’t have enough income to pay for this place or all the other bills that accrued due to my wife’s illness,” Bambas said.
He explained that he eventually had to sell his house and return to work, first at a hardware store and later at Meijer.
“It wasn’t hard for me because I knew I had to do it,” Bambas said. “I’m lucky that God gave me a good enough body, strong enough to stand there eight, eight and a half hours a day.”
In 2012, the same year Bambas lost his GM pension, the U.S. automaker regained its position as the world’s largest automaker by sales, a significant turnaround from its 2009 bankruptcy.
For Bambas, the recognition came as a surprise. “It came out of the blue — that’s really what I thought,” Bambas said.
The crowdfunding campaign remains open and funds are accumulating; in the meantime, Bambas is reportedly unaware of the scale of the influx of funds pouring in to support him.
independent GM has been contacted for comment.
