Ricky Barksdale received the “#1 DECENT DUDE” award from pregnant subway rider Yvonne Lin who he gave up his seat for.
A pregnant commuter in New York awarded a fellow subway rider a statue for being the first man during her two pregnancies to give up his seat for her.
Yvonne Lin, 38, got the idea about two years ago when she was pregnant with her first child.
Lin said plenty of women had offered up their seats for her during her pregnancies, but it was not until recently that a man did the same.
Having grown frustrated after her first pregnancy, Lin decided to start carrying around a bronze trophy that read "#1 DECENT DUDE" in case she encountered an upstanding gentleman.
After eight months of lugging the trophy around in her laptop bag, Lin finally got to hand it out to Ricky Barksdale in February.
“I was standing for three stops before he noticed,” said Lin, who was in for a two-hour commute home during rush hour when Barksdale offered up his seat.
Lin said Barksdale was “adorably sweet and embarrassed” when she gave him the trophy.
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Barksdale said he laughed with being the presented the award because "stuff like that just doesn't happen.”
Barksdale who says his act was the “right thing to do” has message for fellow men: "If you see an elderly, disabled or pregnant person give them your seat.”
“I’m a designer so I tend to have wacky ideas,” Lin said of her social experiment.
Along with "#1 DECENT DUDE," the statue is engraved with "First Man to Offer Subway Seat to Pregnant Woman throughout Two Pregnancies.”
Lin said she believes it is better to reward behavior like Barksdale’s instead of publicly shaming people who do not give up their seats, which she says she has tried before.
“He is the closest thing to a real life superhero,” Lin said of the good samaritan.
Lin says Barksdale got in touch with her after a friend recognized him in her Instagram post.
Barksdale currently works as a stuntman and actor, according to his IMDB page.
