A mum from Exmouth and her autistic son have been overwhelmed by the response to a plea for birthday cards.
Karen Jones put out a heart wrenching plea last week on an Exmouth community Facebook group. Her son Ollie's birthday was coming up, and he was a big fan of birthday cards.
However, it saddened Karen to find out that her son had been making his own birthday cards to himself in preparation for his 15th.
Karen posted to the group: "HELP?? My autistic son is 15 shortly ... hes just told me he loves opening cards to extent he's made himself a couple. We are small family and he has no friends so gets very few.... if you have an old one at back of cupboard maybe you could send it to him? need be here for Saturday - thank you :-)"
She said to her local paper, the Exmouth Express and Echo: "We are a small family – it's just us two and the dog. Ollie has no friends to the extent where he turned up yesterday morning and showed me he had made some birthday cards for himself."
It just brought tears to my eyes, I thought 'oh my god', it was a lump in the throat moment'.
Thinking they may be due to receive one or two last minute sentiments from people in the local area, the family could never have prepared for what came next.
The post was shared 25,000 times around the world and Ollie received around 20,000 cards including an Xbox from Saudi Arabia and the offer of a holiday.
We hope you had a lovely birthday Ollie!
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