In 2010, Weld County, Colorado Deputy Sheriff Sam Brownlee was killed during a police chase. Five years later, Sam’s sons Tanner and Chase Brownlee had an opportunity to purchase his police cruiser, which was being auctioned off for charity, as a remembrance of their late father.

With 147,000 miles on the clock, the decommissioned Dodge Charger SXT squad car was valued at approximately $12,500, and Tanner planned on simply outbidding everyone else to get the car. Things didn’t work out that way Tanner had anticipated that they would though.

Instead, bidding skyrocketed to $60,000 – a sum that the Brownlee family simply could not match, and the car sold to another bidder. But it turned out that Steve Wells, a local rancher and the winner of the auction, had a little surprise in store for the Brownlees.

“Tanner, here’s your car”, Wells said as he handed the nineteen year old the keys seconds after winning the auction. Wells, having no personal connection to the Brownlees, simply wanted to do right by the family and his community. Proceeds from the auction and the GoFundMe page will go to Concerns of Police Survivors, an organization providing services to the surviving family members of officers killed in the line of duty.

As for Tanner, he was simply in shock with how the events unfolded. “I shook his hand and… I didn’t know”, he said. “It just means so much to me – I thank everyone for that.”