A hospital valet has become an unexpected source of hope for cancer patients in Buffalo, New York. Jon Avery parks cars at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. His warm greetings lift patients arriving for difficult treatment.

Breast cancer survivor Kate Fink, 41, credits Avery with helping her through her illness. Day after day, he told her to keep pushing, saying: You got this. After a while, she believed it.

Avery says his goal with patients is to have a meaningful encounter that is not hollow. If not for the wheelchairs, you would never know some of these people were even sick, he said. He calls himself a shining lighthouse of hope in the dark storm of their diagnoses.

Fink was so grateful that she wanted to do something nice for him. She had heard he was saving to attend a Buffalo Bills game. Last month, she and colleagues at West Herr Automotive Group raised money and got Avery tickets and field passes.

Avery said the gesture was hardly necessary. I serve people, that is what I do, he said. His example shows that care in a hospital takes many forms.