Ezzie Richey will never forget that backpack.

“I had given up. I didn’t even care anymore. I didn’t see it working. And then I started asking myself, ‘Why am I still here?'” Richey, an Army veteran, admitted to a Los Angeles Times reporter almost two years go.

The bag of water, a wool cap, a blanket and other useful items rested on the LA sidewalk. Richey did nothing. Until someone piqued his curiosity, and told him to open it. It was a small thing, but somehow, it got him back on the road to recovery. And finding himself again.

A former soldier (he served at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea) Richey started hitting the bottle when one tragedy after the other tore through his life, and took the people he loved.

“There was a lot of stuff going on and I guess I was running from it.”

After trekking to California, the vet pursued an education — studying sociology — but was soon out of a place to live. With nowhere to go, his grades plummeted and he was eventually forced to withdraw. Soon a nomad bouncing from shelter to shelter, it wasn’t until the backpack hit the pavement that he thought about fighting back.

It just so happens the man who dropped the “survival kit” for him to utilize when he was at his lowest, is the man who he volunteers for now. In 1999 the man — Tom Bagamane is his name — founded The Giving Spirit, an organization that serves the homeless.

Watch and hear Richey tell his redemptive story, and how he’s giving back now, in the clip below: