Responding to a Twitter campaign that went viral, New York Jets’ backup quarterback Tim Tebow made a spirit-lifting phone call to an upstate high school student who remained hospitalized from a car crash Saturday night that killed two other teens.
On Monday, Tebow rang up 17-year-old Matt Hardy, a huge fan of the quarterback, and the two chatted.
The online campaign to get Tebow to call Hardy began to trend nationally by 7 p.m. By that time, more than 50,000 people had tweeted the hashtag #TebowCallMatt, according to hashtag.org, a site that follows Twitter traffic.
It was part of an effort that included a plea for Olympic swimmer Missy Franklin to call Bailey Wind, a friend of Hardy’s who was also hospitalized in the crash. Both #TebowCallMatt and the Franklin version, #MissyCallBailey, were started by the teens’ friends.
Hardy’s brother Michael tweeted a few minutes after 9 p.m. on Dec. 3:
By 9:30 p.m., Tebow himself confirmed the story by taking to his own Twitter account:
By midnight, Franklin tweeted that she’d done her best in the matter as well.
Chris Stewart and Deanna Rivers, two other students riding with Hardy and Wind, died in the crash. The driver of the car that crashed into Harding’s swerved in front of the teens’ vehicle and failed alcohol tests at the scene. Tebow himself does not drink alcohol.
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.