It's often said that "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel."

While that is true of apples (for both chemical and biological reasons), the recent fundraiser for Alex has once again proved that it's stretching the point way too far to apply the truism to people.

Every community has a few bad apples - that's why we have laws and police to enforce them.

But the vast majority of people in any given community are "good apples," and remain good, despite the bad ones in our midst.

Indeed, sometimes the bad apples bring out the best in the good ones.

You can't get much better than the car that was donated by Ian Speckman and his team at Maple Ridge Chrysler to a young woman - Alex - recently kidnapped and beaten for being a Good Samaritan.

And the fact that people like Speckman often make no effort to take credit for their magnanimity - in fact, as in this case, make a conscious effort towards anonymity - only underscores the point.

A group of concerned good apples set out to prove that the Maple Ridge barrel is far from spoiled. We'll go so far as to say that those good apples actually help to immunize the community against the bad apples. And judging from comments we received on our Facebook page , it's clear we're not alone in that assessment.

For instance, Virgina Windover wrote, "Still a lot of caring people. let's give them a HUGE applause."

Larry Styba described the Chrysler team as "Very classy," while Rosemary Johnson described them as "awesome."

Faye Luxemburg-Hyam, executive director of the Family Education centre, added: "Thank you Ian and Maple Ridge Chrysler for helping the young woman and providing yet another example of how wonderfully generous our community is!"