The toddler managed somehow to slip out of the house while the grandmother slept, only to huddle beside the building’s entrance, which is where he found her.

When I was growing up in the 80s, I would always hear ‘never get into a stranger’s car under any circumstances’.

Just like with everything else, times change, and while many would say it’s still advisable to know the person who’s going to be driving you, services such as Uber and Lyft have put us into a new age of vehicle-based ‘trust’.

It’s not that uncommon anymore to hear stories where drivers have gone well above and beyond to look after the passengers they’re carrying.

One such story, taking place in Worcester, Massachusetts, went viral recently.

Ashton Mazyck is a behavioral therapist who works with children during the day, but drives for Lyft in his spare time. He was at the end of a shift at 3am on a particularly cold January night, when he came upon a shocking discovery.

After parking in his building’s car lot, he spotted what he took for a small animal shivering in the cold by the lobby door.

Upon approaching, however, he realized it wasn’t a small animal after all. Instead, he was left in shock when it turned out to be a 2-year-old girl.

Ashton’s first action was to call his mother, Vida Mazyck, who lived inside the same building. He asked her to bring a blanket, before the two of them took her inside.

“Her feet were numb,” Vida explained. “I kept saying, ‘Does this hurt?’ And she couldn’t feel me rubbing her feet.”

The Worcester Police arrived on scene and rushed the 2-year-old to hospital. It would later transpire that the child was being watched by her grandmother as her mom was on a night shift.

The toddler managed somehow to slip out of the house while the grandmother slept, only to huddle beside the building’s entrance, which is where Ashton found her.

Ashton told local media: “I don’t know how long she was out there, but I’m just definitely thankful, you know, that I was there when I was.”