Alonzo Johnson didn’t know that anyone was watching him.
He didn’t know the two women behind him had taken a photograph as he stood on the escalator and headed toward the first floor of the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside.
And he certainly didn’t know that the picture of him, arm-in-arm with an 83-year-old man who was too afraid to go down the moving stairs alone, was going to be posted to Facebook.
He learned about all of that only after the image went viral last week and ricocheted online at a time when so much negativity has seemed to overcrowd social media.
All Johnson was trying to do, he said, was be helpful to a person in need.
“It was a normal, simple thing that a lot of people do in the world and it just never gets seen,” said Johnson, 23, of his act of kindness. “When I found out, I was in shock. The whole attention and everything that it got, it just grew so fast.”
Johnson said it all began last Thursday when he went shopping with his older cousin, who was buying clothing for her baby at the Holyoke Mall.
After the two split up, Johnson neared the top of the escalator when he noticed two women speaking to the elderly man. He said he immediately knew, by the look on the man’s face, that something wasn’t right.
“I came over and they saw that I was going down the escalator, and they offered me to go down first,” he said. “I thought they were all together, and I said, ‘No, no, take your time. I’m in no rush.’ Then something told me not to go down the escalator at all, and to keep standing by.”
Johnson said he caught part of the conversation the women were having, and he quickly learned that the elderly man, whom they didn’t know, was hesitant to step onto the escalator because of a past bad experience he had on moving steps.
So, Johnson, who works at Stop and Shop but recently got a job working with children, jumped into action.
“I said, ‘Sir, do you want me to help you down the escalator? I can take your arm, and we can go down together,’ ” Johnson said.
And they did.
Johnson said he tried to keep the man calm and engaged in small talk as they went.
“To get his mind off of what was going on,” he said. “He was conquering his fear.”
As they descended the stairs, the two women apparently took a photo of Johnson and the man, from behind.
The image — which shows them standing side-by-side, the man’s pastel-colored shirt tucked neatly into his khaki shorts, a hat resting atop his head — was posted to Facebook last week.
Since then, it has been shared more than 195,000 times and “liked” nearly half a million times.
“A little redemption for the suffering human soul,” Paula Accorsi Picard, the woman who posted the photo, wrote on Facebook. “The young man gently offered an assurance, they looked at each other eye to eye for just a moment, and the older man accepted his arm. Everyone else remained patient. So, so sweet to witness!”
She added, “In about an hour, the evening news will air and we’ll be reminded of division, race wars, political mud-slinging, shootings and other heartaches. But today, violence, race, age, politics and other social lines were blurred and one person simply helped another. I wanted to hug both of them. Whoever this young man is, YOUR FAMILY RAISED YOU RIGHT!”
As the week rolled on, Johnson said he started getting tagged in the picture by friends on Facebook.
Johnson and Picard even linked up online because of all the attention the picture was getting.
“It was never anyone’s intention to do anything more than post the photo,” she said in a telephone interview. “[Connecting was] an unexpected little bonus. He’s such a nice kid.”
Despite the sudden Internet fame, Johnson remains humble about the whole experience and reiterated that he was simply trying to be of service.
“My mom always told me and my little brothers that if you see someone who needs help, you should assist them and just go for it,” he said. “You never know who is watching you; you never know what’s going to happen. You’ve just got to keep doing the right thing and staying positive.”
Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.