Not all heroes wear capes, some wear yellow vests and a dodger hat.
A bumper-to-bumper parking lot after a Dodger game and a vest in his friend’s car gave John Rizkallah the idea to help other Dodger fans get home safely.
The 23-year-old from Corona, who happens to be a director and writer in LA, said he was just killing time with a few friends after Wednesday’s game when he thought there was something he could do to help.
“Me and my friends left and we had no plan to do all of this afterwards, we didn’t even plan to make a video,” said Rizkallah.
Rizkallah said he and his friends waited because they knew how bad traffic is in Los Angeles.
He looked in the back of his friend’s car and saw a vest, then “the light bulb blinked”.
For about 20 minutes, Rizkallah and his friends walked around the Dodger Stadium parking lot, waving to the drivers and helping people exit the parking lot as safely as possible.
“People listened, I answered so many questions,” he added. “I just thought, ‘I don’t know why there is traffic,’ but I helped them track down.”
Rizkallah says he thinks the vest belonged to his work colleague: “I think it miraculously showed up, it was in the back of my friend’s car.” he said. “I saw it and was like ‘no way’.”
Rizkallah said it was boredom that sparked the idea.
John Rizkallah and friends were attending the Dodger game on Wednesday when he decided to help the drivers by getting them out of the parking lot.
Although some stadium employees were driving vehicles in other parts of the parking lot, Rizkallah said he noticed there weren’t any near the exits where drivers would get stuck getting out.
As they drove by, Rizkallah said he saw some other stadium employees who, interestingly, were wearing the same colored vest that he had put on.
The staff had glow sticks, “so I was like, ‘Okay, I missed this,'” he said.
Rizkallah said none of the staff noticed him the whole time he was helping people.
“Everyone was very nice, they said ‘thank you’,” said Rizkallah. “I’ve helped, I feel like I’ve helped.”
Aside from directing traffic, Rizkallah said he also got a lot of questions from people asking what was going on and even helped some pedestrians cross the street at one point or another.
“It’s all positive, for which I am very grateful. I laughed and smiled a lot and people with thumbs up, ”said Rizkallah.
He said some people even offered to pay him to get them out of what he refused.
“They were very nice. You could tell everyone was enjoying themselves even though we lost to the Dodgers,” said Rizkallah. “I prevented a lot of collisions,” he added.
The video shows vehicles struggling to get past each other, some zooming in by ignoring Rizkallah’s instructions, and one car even making donuts in a small open space.
“In my parking lot ?!” shouts Rizkallah in the video as he runs across the parking lot.
Rizkallah said people were not upset, they would just ignore him or just shake their head.
“Let me vibe,” he says in the video.
He said he was joking with the drivers about why he was there and said, “I would tell them I played to the Dodgers and lost so I have to work to get the money back.”
“A lot of people were really nice and talked to our whole group,” he said.
Although he got mixed reactions from people when they realized he wasn’t actually a stadium employee, Rizkallah says the overall experience was very positive.
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