Student asks mom to pack 2 school lunches so friend can eat

A New Mexico mother thought her son had a big appetite: Since the beginning of the school year, he has requested two lunches a day.

Josette Duran, without really questioning her son, just packed the food.

Then, one day, she asked the 14-year-old whether he was not feeling full with just one lunch. "He said, 'No, Mom. It's for this little boy at school, and he sits by himself, and all he eats is a fruit cup.'"

She continued making the extra lunch until she was called into the school’s principal’s office and was told the boy’s mother -- who just got a new job -- wanted to pay her back.

“She says, ‘I know this isn’t much, but I just got a job, and I know you’ve been feeding my son,” Duran told KOAT.

Duran, who used to live in her car with her son and washed him in bathrooms, found out that the boy’s mother could not afford lunch and would send the boy to school with a fruit cup. When the woman offered to pay her back, she refused to take the woman’s money.

Duran coaches the Eldorado High School girls’ volleyball team, which raised $400 to pay her back, but instead of pocketing the money, Duran paid all of the delinquent lunch accounts for students at the school.

"So now, nobody in that school owes any money, and now everyone can eat,” she said.