One year ago, Erick Vandersnick learned just how important his quirky bus videos were to a 5-year-old boy across the country.

Erick Vandersnick has made YouTube videos for Northwest Bus Sales in Federal Way for two-and-a-half years. The videos are usually of lot or bus tours that show the various features and mechanics of the buses they sell and lease.

In general, the videos help sales, Northwest Bus Sales owner Russ Vandersnick said.

But the sales tactic became so much more when he got an email from a mother.

“There was a gal back East, just outside of Boston, and she’s got this autistic son named Xander and the kid’s just really into buses,” Erick Vandersnick said. “He’d look up buses on YouTube and every night when she came home she’d see Xander watching videos I had done.”

Heather Magan said her son Xander was simply drawn to how school buses work, their features and nearly everything about them.

“He was watching the same four videos over and over,” Magan recalled. “I sent an email and told [Erick] my son really loved his videos.”

Although Xander was diagnosed with autism — he didn’t speak until “well after” his second birthday — Magan said Xander is highly intelligent and began reading soon after he did finally speak.

“When he was a baby, my mom bought him this electronic toy where you match the letter sound to the letter,” she said. “And we sat and watched that he was matching all the letters to their sounds.”

Then one day after he started talking, she was driving in the car and he would call out the names of the streets she drove by. Figuring he just memorized the street names as she mentioned them in casual conversation, she didn’t think much of it until she was an hour away from home and he was still naming streets.

Throughout time, Xander developed a “series of obsessions” but school buses “happened to be the one that hung around the longest,” Magan said, adding that she has a school bus tattooed on her arm with “Xander” in his handwriting underneath.

Before Magan knew it, Erick Vandersnick had not only given a shout out to Xander in one of his school bus tour videos, but he had named the bus and video “Xander’s bus.”

“It was a hit, we got a lot of response from it on YouTube,” Erick Vandersnick said about the March 11, 2014 video.

Magan said she loved it and showed everyone who wanted to see the video.

“I showed it to Xander and he was shocked,” she remembered. “He didn’t even know what to say. [Erick] said his name and he gasped and stopped and stared and we watched it three or four times.”

From there, Erick Vandersnick would receive about four or five other requests for shout outs from children, teens and even an adult with special needs.

The most recent request came from a 16-year-old girl named Ellie Bone from Alaska, who asked for a shout out for her 19-year-old autistic brother, Andy.

In early February, Ellie commented on one of the Northwest Bus Sales videos requesting the favor after she consistently heard her brother watching and listening to Erick Vandersnick’s videos for some time.

“He’d sit in the living room with the iPad, and he didn’t wear headphones, and he’d watch the same Northwest Bus Sales — he’d watch that guy’s videos over and over,” she said. “So I decided to look up the channel on YouTube one day.”

Sure enough, Erick Vandersnick honored her wish and Andy was ecstatic.

“I just knew it was something he’d like,” Ellie said. “He’s really into buses, and vehicles have been something he’s always been into. It’s his main hobby and interest and it was a really easy way to make him happy. It’s something he can look back on.”

Ellie said Andy looks up to Erick Vandersnick and after watching the video, she helped Andy send a video clip of him saying thank you to Erick before Andy would eventually show the video to his special education class.

“I’m really proud of her,” said Ellie’s father, Seth Bone. “It’s great to see her taking an interest to making her brother happy.”

Seth Bone said his son not only has autism but Fragile X Syndrome, a developmental disability. When he’s not watching bus or truck videos, he’s attending school at Sitka High School in Alaska or working at a local grocery store a couple days a week.

“I’ve sat by him and watched their videos, which are pretty neat themselves, but the [shout outs] are really neat, really special,” Seth Bone said.

Erick Vandersnick said he’s also done shout outs for a kid in Texas, a bus driver in Canada and for a man with cerebral palsy.

“It’s really surprising,” he said. “I just hold the camera and ramble on about buses, it’s no big deal to me.”

But Erick Vandersnick’s been told his voice is soothing and has received a lot of positive feedback.

“It’s kind of cool, you know?” Erick Vandersnick said.

Magan said it’s great that someone acknowledged her son even though he’s a little different.

“Other kids are like, OK, we get it, let’s talk about Sponge Bob,” she said. “So to have this group of people say, ‘Hey, you’re pretty cool because you like school buses,’ is pretty great. It lets these children know it’s OK to be who they are.

“I don’t want [my boys] to cover up who they are to please anyone and I think it’s really sweet and amazing that they’re willing to do that for these kids,” Magan said of Northwest Bus Sales.

Northwest Bus Sales has been a family-owned business in the Puget Sound area for about 28 years and has been in Federal Way for about two years. For more information, visit www.nwbus.com. To watch Erick Vandersnick’s YouTube videos, search “Northwest Bus Sales” at www.youtube.com.

Xander Magan, 6. Contributed photo

Xander Magan, 6, with his mother, Heather. Xander received a temporary tattoo from Erick Vandersnick and his daughter, which he is wearing. His mother’s tattoo is of a school bus with “Xander” in his handwriting underneath. Contributed photo

Erick Vandersnick makes YouTube videos for Northwest Bus Sales in Federal Way and gives shout outs to kids with autism and other kids with special needs. Contributed photos