Mystery Secret Santa pays for $45,000 worth of layaway items at Colorado Walmart

Walmart shoppers in Longmont, Colo., got a heartwarming surprise on Friday.

An anonymous donor spent $45,000 to cover costs of the entire layaway section at one Walmart store, Denver news station KDVR reports, and reduced the financial burden that inevitably comes with the holidays for dozens of local families. The store then contacted everyone who had put items on layaway to let them know that they could pick up the purchases they had arranged to pay off.

“This year’s been really hard,” Lisa McMillan, a single mother of five, told KDVR. “I was actually going to cancel my layaway, because I couldn’t pay it. This came as a really true blessing.”

Jaime Day, another mother who had her items paid in full, told Colorado’s KOAA that she doesn’t “always know how Christmas is going to happen.”

“People do small acts, which is greatly appreciated, but this one really stood out,” she said, adding that she thought there had been a glitch in Walmart’s system when she first got the news.

Some people were inspired by the random act of kindness to also do something for others. One Coloradan told KDVR that they decided to donate the money they saved by donating to a few charities.

Paying off strangers’ layaway balances has become a somewhat popular way to give back around the holidays. In 2011, Secret Santas showed up at Kmarts in Colorado, Michigan, Ohio and Florida to pay for other shoppers’ layaway items, the Denver Post reported at the time.

The $45,000 donation is more generous than most, however, relieving many local families of holiday stress.

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