CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) — Taking your parent to the senior prom wouldn't fly for most kids, but for one senior at Collegiate High School in Corpus Christi, it was simply the right thing to do.
Joe Moreno said when his mother, Vanessa Moreno, was 17 years old, she never got to experience her big dance because she dropped out of school to take care of him. Now his gesture of giving back has gone viral.
Vanessa said Joe has been saying ever since he was little that he would take her to prom; and come Joe's senior year, she was surprised at how adamant he still was.
"I'm trying to persuade him, 'Hey, take somebody else. Take somebody. This is your prom. Like, we can have our memories somewhere else.' And he kept on. 'No, I'm taking you.'" Vanessa said.
Anyone who knows Joe knows how much he cares for his mom, so it was a no brainer to take her to prom.
"I really love talking about my family. It's something that I'm really passionate about. I'm really passionate about who I am. I love who I am. So when I bring my mom, everyone knows I love my mom. I tell them about it, and they are all really supportive and really loving of the idea," Joe said.
Joe's friends Ladandria Taylor and Felicity Shea were at prom too and said they made a stunning couple.
"Gorgeous. They looked really nice. They did. I loved her hair. It's all pretty and curvy," Taylor said.
"She was pretty nice. Her dress was all perfect. She looked perfect. She really wanted to be there," Shea said.
After prom was over, Joe tweeted pictures of the dance and why he took his mom, and that's when the story went viral.
"20 likes. Then 100. Then 200. It just blew up. It was crazy. To 1,000! Then when I woke up the next day, 12,000! That whole day just went crazy," Joe said.
Vanessa is glad people like their story.
"I've had so many messages of mothers that can relate to my story, and say that I've raised a good gentleman, and that made me feel good," Vanessa said.
Joe will be graduating high school in May and plans to be an oncologist one day because of his grandfather who passed from lung cancer.