by Kevin Burton
Today’s glad tidings from the Good News Network, I kid you not, involve going to a laundromat.
Or should I say a laundromat going to you.
My wife and I just had a major repair done to our washer. We had a little wait for a repair person to become available, then a longer wait while our part was ordered.
So we had not one but two trips to a laundry in the town north of us. We packed up three loads of clothing, then later three more loads, our Tide Pods and dryer sheets for our inconvenient chore.
That was not fun but we were efficient about it, so no problem really.
Years ago I did laundry in apartment complexes and at college, where if you weren’t vigilant, people would take your clothes out of the machine and put theirs in.
So what follows is the happiest laundry story I’ve ever heard of. It’s the story of a retired cop, still doing good things in his Maryland community:
“Wade Milyard heard the voice from ‘out of nowhere’ and knew he needed to listen—he thought it was God, calling him into action,” reads the GNN story.
“It started in the Spring of 2024 when the former canine officer for the Frederick Police Department in Maryland was responding to a domestic dispute at a homeless camp.”
“Soon after he investigated the disturbance, the voice rang out.”
“Ask them about their laundry…”
“Milyard heeded the voice, asked the question, and unknowingly set the course for a prayer-fulfilling future,” GNN reported. “The homeless couple he interviewed told him they typically washed their laundry in a nearby creek.”
The cop never forgot that response, nor his call to service. He pooled multiple donations with some of his own money and went to work creating a full-service laundromat on wheels.
“Fresh Step Laundry was born—with a mission ‘to help restore dignity to the unhoused community by providing free, accessible, and hygienic laundry.’”
“Since retiring from the police force a year ago, the 45-year-old has been traveling around his Maryland city, which is near D.C., making a difference—one load of wash at a time.”
While he was done with policing, he didn’t want to stop helping people.
“I wanted to serve,” Milyard said. “This is just something that they don’t have, you know?”
“He’s set a schedule so people can meet him to take advantage of his laundry service, and his email is at the bottom of the web page. He never charges a single cent, but his work yields substantial dividends.
“If you’re clean, you just feel better,” a man named Chris Washington told Steve Hartman of CBS News. “You feel a little bit more proud of yourself.”
“That’s the thing,” Milyard said, “You’re doing it to maybe give them a little bit of a boost. If having clean clothes can help them just a little bit, then my mission is fulfilled.”
“In the last several weeks alone, Fresh Step has washed more than 2,000 pounds of laundry and Milyard’s next goal is to add a second vehicle so he can double the number of people he can serve.”
“Milyard has willfully taken on a very unpleasant and humbling task. But he says that when you feel a calling like that, there’s not a sour smell in the world that can steal that sweet sense of purpose,” reads the CBS News report.
“The mission that started with a voice from out of nowhere keeps spinning forward—and there will be even more impact in the next cycle,” GNN wrote.
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