Cityscape

'Walking Man' James Robertson of Detroit Is ABC's 'Person of the Week'

February 05, 2015, 12:31 PM by  Alan Stamm

A media whirlwind continues swirling around marathon commuter James Robertson, who earns far more than the proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

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He'll talk with, and no doubt walk with, an ABC correspondent and crew from "World News Tonight" on Thursday afternoon.

"James is 'Person of the Week'," confirms Evan Leedy, a Wayne State student also being interviewed. A third participant is investment manager Blake Pollock of UBS in Troy, Leedy tells Deadline.


Evan Leedy: "I'm excited for the big reveal tomorrow" at Suburban Ford in Sterling Heights.
(Photo by Shawn Wright / Wayne State University)

Leedy, 19, started a GoFundMe drive for Robertson that has raised $300,000 from more than 11,400 donors in four days. Pollock, a vice-president of wealth management, befriended Robertson earlier and relayed his saga to the Freep.

The week of global attention began Super Bowl Sunday with a Page One profile by Bill Laitner of the Detroit Free Press. He and photographer Ryan Garza accompanied the Detroiter on one of his long hauls home from Rochester Hills by foot and bus.

Robertson, Leedy and Pollock also will appear Thursday on the "Let It Rip" segment of Fox 2 News, which airs at 10 p.m., the WSU computer science junior posts Thursday morning on Facebook.

He also previews a Friday presentation that local TV stations plan to cover: Suburban Ford of Sterling Heights will give Robertson a red 2015 Taurus to greatly ease his daily commute from Detroit to the Oakland plastics factory where he operates an injection molder. "I'm excited for the big reveal tomorrow," Leedy posts.

In one of his dozen or so interviews since Monday, Leedy spoke Wednesday with Shawn Wright of WSU's Marketing and Communicatons office for an online article.

“Without technology, none of this would have been possible,” the Macomb Township student says. “This is all because of cell phones, crowdfunding websites and social media. . . .

"A lot of younger people and fellow students think they can’t make a difference until they get out of college. But I did this all from my phone. You can make a difference.”

 

Coverage of the Detroit commuter includes this report in "Il Messaggero," an Italian newspaper. The headline says: "Walking 34 kilometers a day to go to work: the web collects over 200 thousand dollars to buy him a car."



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