Illinois soldier gets airline ticket home, thanks to a stranger

A generous stranger bought a ticket for an Illinois soldier who was waiting at a Texas airport hoping to catch a flight home on Memorial Day weekend. Keaton Tilson, 19, a U.S. Army mechanic stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, was given permission on Thursday to go home to Granite City, Ill., for the Memorial Day weekend, Fox 2 Now reported.

Tilson had not been home since Christmas.

Tilson went to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, bought a standby ticket and hoped to get a last-minute seat on a flight. The teenager waited at the airport for two days. "It looked good at first," Tilson's mother, Jennifer, told CBS News. "There were open seats. Then something happened, and he kept missing flights and missing flights."

Tilson asked a gate agent if there was anything else he could do but the agent told the soldier that it did not look promising.