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Photo and this 'blog article/post are both licensed under the

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.Recently on Facebook, someone posted a story about a New York City cab driver who gave a terminal elderly woman a ride that was touching and heart warming.

It was a great story!

When I first read it, I immediately wondered, "Is this a true story, or fiction?"

Unfortunately, the author's name was missing from the story.

Sadly, it seems some people, when they share something they like, they remove or omit the original source of the very thing they share, giving no credit to the author, photographer, artist, composer, or creator. They don't include any reference to an original source either.

This is one of my pet peeves: NOT giving credit where credit is due.

That made it quite difficult for me to figure out if the story was fiction or true, or some variant between the two (i.e. a dramatization of something based on a true event).

After some significant searching around the 'net, I eventually learned that the story's author was Kent Nerburn, and that it was originally published in 1999 in Kent's book, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis. I ran across Kent's web site where he has 'blogged about the story, confirming that the story is in fact a TRUE STORY relating an actual incident from his own life.

The story has been circulating via email and web sites, often without crediting the author, since the 1990s. Recently it's gone viral. That may have prompted the recent republication of the story in the Huffington Post.

Kent's story "The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget" can now be read online at the Huffington Post here:And in case you still are skeptical, the urban myth-busting web site, Snopes, has likewise confirmed the story is TRUE.

If you ever run across something you want to share with others, please be sure to include credit. I would also recommend mentioning where you found it, so if the author or creator is not listed in the source where you found it, someone could potentially trace backwards following sources to find the original.

Aaron out.