When 19-year-old Jude Cundiff arrived in Searcy on his bike two weekends ago, he was just looking for a safe place to camp for the night, as he had many times during his nine-month bicycle journey from Los Angeles, Calif.
What he was not expecting was to spend the next three days living in a dorm room, eating in the cafeteria, attending chapel and going through the other basic routines of a student at Harding University.
Cundiff said he was just going to get some coffee at Midnight Oil when junior Soffia Metzler overheard him telling the barista he was traveling across the country on his bike.
Metzler said she heard Cundiff say he was from Los Angeles, so being from San Francisco, she struck up a conversation that eventually led to her offering him a place to stay on campus.
“I figured if I were on the road, I wouldn’t just want to go to a coffee shop,” Metzler said. “He mentioned something about camping in Berry Hill Park, which he’d seen on a map, and I thought ‘If I have the resources to help you, I’m not gonna let you.’ If I were here and met some random person I would want them to take me in too.”
Metzler said she decided to ask senior Marcos Tolentino to house Cundiff in his dorm room for the night. Tolentino said he was originally hesitant, but agreed to take him in anyway.
“I walked into the lobby of Grad and here comes Soffia with Jude and he’s bringing in this huge bicycle with a bunch of license plates, bags, tires … it was 110 pounds,” Tolentino said. “He had his helmet and bicycle jersey on and a scruffy beard. I thought he was in his 30s or 40s but then I found out he was 19.”
The next day, Cundiff went to chapel and a business class with Tolentino. Tolentino then introduced him to Assistant Professor of Bible Andrew Baker and later that afternoon the two of them took Cundiff to Bike City to get his bike repaired.
Cundiff said he began his journey after being hit by a bus in November while riding his bike in Los Angeles. Cundiff said the near-death experience opened his eyes to the fact that no matter what plans he had made, there would always be other plans made for him. Cundiff said he then decided he needed to go follow his dreams.
As for his experience at Harding, Cundiff said he was impressed by the kindness he received.
“Every place is different and unique in its own way and I enjoy them all the same,” Cundiff said. “But Harding was definitely one of the better places I’ve been to. It was reinforcement to the lesson that kindness exists everywhere. You may be in a place that doesn’t seem the best but sometimes you can still end up finding something that really tops your expectations.”
