Curtis Jenkins, a school bus driver at Lake Highlands Elementary in Dallas, asked each child on his route what they wanted for Christmas. Not casually. Not as small talk to pass time during the drive. Genuinely. He listened, remembered, wrote it down. Seventy students, seventy different dreams.
Using his own money and community support, he secretly bought gifts for all seventy students. Spent his own paycheck on toys for children who weren’t his own. Reached out to local businesses, community members, anyone willing to help make sure these kids would have something to open on Christmas morning.
On December 21st, he surprised them with the presents during pickup. Can you imagine? You’re a child boarding the school bus expecting the usual routine, and instead your bus driver—the person who greets you every morning and safely delivers you home every afternoon—is handing you the exact gift you asked for. The toy you mentioned weeks ago, thinking maybe it was just a nice conversation but not expecting anything to come of it.
One child asked if he was Santa. Because in that moment, Curtis Jenkins might as well have been. Not the commercial Santa from malls and movies, but the real spirit of the thing—someone who notices what children need and want, then works quietly to make it happen without expecting recognition or reward.
His gesture, driven by wanting to “magnify loving and caring,” went viral with 9,000 Facebook shares and inspired him to start the Magnify, Caring and Change Foundation. Because what began as one bus driver caring about his seventy students revealed something larger—that acts of generosity inspire more generosity, that kindness creates ripples far beyond the initial gesture.
Curtis Jenkins drives a school bus. It’s not a glamorous job. He’s not wealthy. He doesn’t have resources most people would consider extraordinary. But he had something more important—the belief that the children on his route deserved to feel special, to have their Christmas wishes granted, to know that someone was paying attention and cared enough to act.
Seventy children. That’s not buying gifts for your own kids or a small group. That’s systematically ensuring an entire bus route of students experiences joy. The time alone—shopping for seventy different items, wrapping them, organizing the surprise—is staggering. But Curtis did it because he understood something fundamental: that for some of these children, this might be the only gift they receive. That Christmas can be a painful reminder of economic inequality unless someone decides to bridge that gap.
The photo shows Curtis in his bus driver uniform, smiling, surrounded by wrapped presents filling the bus. His joy is evident—not the self-congratulatory satisfaction of someone performing charity for recognition, but the genuine happiness of someone who gets to witness children’s dreams coming true.
When that child asked if he was Santa, Curtis probably laughed it off. But in the truest sense, yes—he was Santa to those seventy children. He embodied the original spirit of Saint Nicholas: seeing need and responding with generosity, making sure children don’t go without, creating magic in places where magic seemed unlikely.
The Magnify, Caring and Change Foundation grew from this viral moment. Curtis realized that his impulse to care for his bus route could scale, could inspire others, could become a model for how communities care for their children. The foundation now helps more students, coordinates more gifts, involves more volunteers—all because one bus driver decided seventy children deserved Christmas joy.
Every school day, Curtis still drives that route. Still greets those students. They remember him as the bus driver who gave them Christmas. But more importantly, they remember him as the adult who listened, who cared, who proved that their wishes mattered enough for someone to make them real.
That’s not just a Christmas story. That’s a reminder that heroes work ordinary jobs and make extraordinary impacts through simple acts of caring.