Paul Forister made the decision very quickly. Earlier this year, a woman had answered his advertisement for home repair work because water was leaking from her roof into her bathtub.

Since the woman, Debbie Powers, didn’t have the money to pay for it, she called Forister and asked if she could set up a payment plan with him. Forister told her if she could get the materials to patch up the roof, he would do the work for hardly anything, which he did.

“How often do you meet a great Samaritan like Paul?” Powers asked. “He really helped me when I needed it.”

Helping someone in need is not something that Forister, a middle-aged father and grandfather raised in St. Louis, just thinks about. It is a deliberate act.

“You can’t take money with you when you die,” Forister explained. “But you can end up with a lot of great memories in the end. It’s not important for me to have a lot of things. A person needs to survive and pay their bills and taxes.”

Forister says he gets something worth much more than “a few extra bucks” when he helps someone like Powers—or someone stranded by the side of a road. He says those kinds of opportunities are chances to continue what he refers to as the “circle of love.”

“I am a person that doesn’t need a lot of the modern comforts. I am most happy while I am working,” he added.

Forister became convinced of this belief years ago when he was married and his three daughters were very young. His wife had told him to stop spending so much time helping others. She was very upset with him, Forister recalls, and for a short while he stopped helping others.

But that changed one day, when he saw a woman stranded on the side of the road standing next to her car. Her tire had blown out. Forister came to her aid. He decided afterward that he would not be able to continue to comply with his wife’s request.

When he returned home that evening, he had a surprising conversation with his wife. She told him earlier that day she was driving through an unsafe part of town with their three young daughters when a tire on the car blew out. An elderly man helped her, she recalled. She then apologized to Forister for telling him to stop spending time helping others and said she would like him to continue to do what he had been doing before.

Then Forister told his wife that he had helped a woman that day after a tire had blown out on her car. They determined that he had been helping the woman at the same time that his wife was receiving help with her car situation.

“I told my wife this was synchronicity,” Forister said. “I really believe it to this day.”

Forister finally got to experience love coming full circle. Last month, when he needed a new place to live, Powers, who had since become friends with him, phoned her good friend, Claire. Claire owns a building near Richmond Heights and had a one-bedroom unit but no tenant. Problem solved!

She not only gave Forister the keys to the apartment, but a spare bed she had in her home. Powers found a set of used furniture for Forister, and, in a matter of days, he was living in a furnished apartment.

“I really credit Debbie and her friend Claire, who didn’t even know me, with helping me out in my time of need. Debbie is really an inspiration,” Forister said.

Forister said, he sees that the circle of love came to him. “This was really unexpected,” he said, “because I never had someone help me so much.”

The fact that this would not have transpired had Forister not helped Powers when she needed it, is not lost on him.

“If I had made my first meeting with Debbie about charging her money, I would never have been able to patch her roof and become friends with her. Debbie, with her big heart, proved that what goes around comes around. I can take money, but creating a circle of love is worth so much more.”

Forister has spent the remaining days of summer happy in his new home, doing home repair jobs and helping others. Oh! And experiencing love coming full circle to him.