Portland business owner receives random act of kindness after multiple break-ins, pays it forward

By Soyoung Kim

Click here for updates on this story

    PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — A series of unfortunate events led to a random act of kindness for a Portland business owner. Now, he’s paying it forward.

The owner of Outrageous Audio is not letting a string of recent break-ins break his holiday spirit.

“We do car stereo, remote starts, security system, video systems. We do everything for the car, even under light systems,” Blane Hartleb, owner of Outrageous Audio, said.

From car stereos to lighting, Hartleb has run his business, Outrageous Audio, in southeast Portland for decades.

“We’ve been there 37 plus years. Started when I was a teenager,” Hartleb said.

FOX 12 recently spoke with Hartleb about his frustrations after his store was broken into twice in the span of a month.

“The first, the warehouse we had that broken into, all the locks were damaged. And then a month later, we had our front door kicked in,” Hartleb said.

Then, Hartleb received a random act of kindness.

“When the news story ran, we had a guy call us, Matt from Town & Country Glass,” Hartleb said. “He goes, you know, I just want to pay it forward, I own a small business here in Portland. And I want to take care of the glass. So, I couldn’t believe it, all of us were shocked.”

Now, Hartleb is also paying it forward.

“Our Facebook group, we asked them what should we donate to, and they said children and pets,” Hartleb said.

FOX 12 caught up with him as he dropped off his donation of more than $5,000 to the Oregon Humane Society (OHS) on Monday. He will also be making the same donation of more than $5,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“Anybody who left us a review, we said that we’d give five dollars, whether the review was bad or not,” Hartleb said. “We had 1,035 new reviews, so that’s $5,175 going to each.”

Hartleb said just like the lights he installs, he chooses to look on the bright side.

“We take care of our little area in Rockwood and doing things like this. You know, the bad things are going to happen. It’s okay, you don’t focus on them, let’s focus on the good things,” Hartleb said.

OHS said they’re always in need of supplies and donations, to learn more about how you can help, visit their website.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.