Chicago nurse and single mother Jasmin Ford is starting the New Year with a clean financial slate, thanks to the generosity of Fifth Third Bank.
On December 12, Mike Crawford, vice president, senior manager, digital product development for the Cincinnati, Ohio-based bank, was waiting to surprise Ford, 30, with news she never expected to hear in her lifetime.
“Fifth Third is paying off all of your student loans today,” Crawford told her in a televised video recording of the moment.
“Are you serious?” Ford asked, tears welling up in her eyes.
Crawford said he was serious.
“Thank you so much!” Ford exclaimed, crying tears of joy.
For Ford and her young son, Caleb, the announcement was a life-changing moment.
Ford, a psychiatric nurse, holds two jobs, working 16-hour double shifts six days a week to make ends meet. She said that the bank’s action to pay off her student loans would change the direction and course of both her life and that of her son.
“You won’t have to go into debt to go to school,” she told Caleb, almost two. “I can save for him and make ends meet. I thought it would take a lifetime to pay off my debt, and Fifth Third made that happen in one day.”
The first in her family to go to college, Ford not only earned a nursing degree, but also a master’s degree in her field. However, self-improvement came at a steep price.