No matter what you do, there’s no escaping judgment on social media, even if your intervention saved another person’s life.
With that in mind, we look to a recent post on X from a woman who describes herself as “C-SPAN but spicy” and has a sizable following. Her account is the usual mix of commentary and selfies, but one post stands out beyond the others:
also the girl who gave me an epipen when i was doing the whole anaphylactic shock thing told me i could venmo her for the epipen and maybe i’m a bad person but i think she’s tacky for that
— chad, red lip cutie (@endofanerajc) March 16, 2026
also the girl who gave me an epipen when i was doing the whole anaphylactic shock thing told me i could venmo her for the epipen and maybe i’m a bad person but i think she’s tacky for that
That post received over 1.5 million views, 21,000 likes, and 168 comments, many of which spanned the spectrum with sentiments ranging from “You go, girl!” to “Why didn’t you have YOURS?”
Setting aside the fact that the poster left her epinephrine at home at the very moment she needed it most, we now turn to you, our readers, who understand the difficulty of sparring with insurance companies to keep yourself and your loved ones safe from anaphylaxis. Do you think the good Samaritan was right to ask for reimbursement, or should she have extended the good deed by simply absorbing the cost and moving on?
You be the judge and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
It was not tacky. The cost of the devices is obscene, and the good samaritan may be on a limited budget.
Considering some pay as much as 300.00 for an EpiPen I think she was more than justified asking for a reimbursement. EMT’s that tend to and save lives certainly bill for their services why shouldn’t this woman get reimbursed for the medication that she carries to save her own life but was kind and generous enough to allow someone else, who was too indifferent to her own health to carry her own epinephrin, use it.
The cost and administrative burden of getting a new one… If somebody gave me theirs I would happily pay them back double the cost.
It seems that this woman is not taking it very seriously that the woman with the epipen saved her life. She talks about “doing the whole anaphylaxis shock thing” as if it were some trivial thing she went through. She should definitely pay for the epipen for the reasons already stated by others, and I would like to know where her epipens were.
The only thing tacky here is her post, calling the person who saved her life tacky. Who even thinks of doing that rather than being grateful and thanking them profusely! And then of course being more than happy to pay for the epi-pen seems obvious in terms of decency. And it would have made sense then to acknowledge that she should have had her own and will in the future, having learned something rather than looking for an opportunity to bad-mouth someone for sport. It’s ugly behavior.
There is information missing from the story – we don’t know if the lady who gave her Epi-pen to the poster is financially stable to just “give” someone their Epi-pen. They are expensive, as others have noted above. I am glad my college age son always has his Epi-pen with (has left it accidentally, turned around and got it, showing up late to something because he didn’t want to risk it.) It was nice of the good samaritan to use her Epi-pen for quicker response instead of calling 911 and waiting, but the poster, I hope since, has re-evaluated the experience and will carry her Epi-pen at all times.
I’m sorry, but if you’re dumb enough to not carry your own Epi-pens with you and then someone has the basic human decency to save your life because you were irresponsible–and then you have the AUDACITY to go online and call them “tacky” for requesting reimbursement for an astronomically expensive medication…that is revolting behavior. The poster needs to take a long, hard look at themself in the mirror. I can’t even fathom being such an irresponsible, entitled idiot.