This millionaire businessman gave away his earnings to better the lives of others following a near-fatal car crash.
38-year-old Mazzi Dumato came away from the Ferrari crash and decided to do away with the vacuous materialistic luxuries to embrace philanthropy.
Mazzi now lives in a VW camper van with his wife, who he met after the incident.
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"I bought a Ferrari and I thought I had achieved everything I wanted to achieve," he said.
"I started partying and two weeks later I got into a car accident and I was in a five-car pileup.
CREDIT: MEDIA DRUM WORD
"I fell asleep and ended up under a pickup truck.
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"That morning in jail the first person I met there was someone that I knew fifteen years ago. He was the father of one of my good friends in high school. I remember I always looked up to him as he had five cars and a was a big businessman in Dubai.
"This guy arranged for me to have a mattress and a pillow and I remember I sat on that and thought this is all I have right now. Take away this freedom and all I had was this mattress and pillow and I was just like everyone else in here.
CREDIT: MEDIA DRUM WORD
"I wasn't that big shot Mazzi that I thought I was the whole time. It was an incredible realisation."
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A year after he left Dubai, Mazzi found himself in a club in Brazil overhearing a woman talking about Africa. That woman, newly released from hospital following a battle with leukemia, was volunteering in the Congo to help other people.
"I met this woman just after she had come back and she's now my wife Milena who has inspired me tremendously at the time. We moved in together and we started to think what we could do," Mazzi said.
The couple donated money to a Dominican Republic charity and eventually traveled there to help Haitian refugees.
CREDIT: MEDIA DRUM WORD
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"Just before we left that village the whole village cried for her," he said.
"This woman really touched so many people from the youngest babies to the oldest people in the village. Everybody loved her, not because of the money she gave them but because of her time.
"This is when I realised that charity is not about money. It's about giving your time truly in service to others. We realised that we cannot give our money to charity and we should be doing our own charity."
Then things took a turn for the worse. Milena developed breast cancer and required a double mastectomy and bone marrow transplant. Mazzi ended up spending around £600,000 on her treatment.
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CREDIT: MEDIA DRUM WORD
To Mazzi's interest, the doctor treating Milena was building a cancer prevention centre, the adjacent property of which was available.
"I bought the land and my deal was that 50% of the cancer prevention centre's income would go to providing the service for free to people who couldn't afford the treatments.
"A lot of people come from outside and have nowhere to sleep. I have a coffee farm in Panama and the rest are rental properties to generate income to go to the centres and pay for hospital bills for her brother who is sick now."
Mazzi, originally from Damascus, Syria, grew up in Brazil and Dubai and earned his money through web design, marketing and real estate.
CREDIT: MEDIA DRUM WORD
"When I left Dubai I had about $3m. I spent around $1m on property and the last $2m went on hospital bills for my wife's cancer and car accident and for her brother's brain tumour which he's still in hospital for.
"With that money, we set up an intensive care unit in Florianopolis where he is going to be moved to. He is the last living member of her family so when he needed the surgery there was no doubt I would help him."
What a LAD.
Featured Image Credit: Media Drum World