A Secret Santa made his list and stepped into an Alabama Walmart to make Christmas better after paying off layaway items for dozens of grateful customers.
An anonymous man donated at the Walmart in Anniston on Monday paid over about $45,000 for remaining layaway balances, Walmart spokesman Casey Staheli confirms to PEOPLE.
“We see it quite frequently around the holiday season,” he says. “There’s a lot of kind and generous people who make a difference.”
The man left a note also that read, “God loves you. Jesus paid the price,” according to ABC affiliate WBMA.
Hannah Haynes said she went into the store on Monday to buy Christmas gifts for her kids and left shocked when the cashier told her she doesn’t need to pay.
“They started bringing my items out and the lady said ‘ma’am, you don’t owe anything. There was someone who came up here and paid off EVERYONE’s layaway totaling $45,000,” she wrote on Facebook.
“I said, ‘I just wanna check and see how much I owe on my layaway so I can get it off in time for Christmas,’” she recalled. “[The cashier] said, ‘Okay.’ So she pulled up my account and she said, ‘You don’t owe anything.’ And I said, ‘Excuse me?’”
Haynes said she is so grateful to the man for his kindness and she put the note on her fridge.
“I was (and still am) SPEECHLESS!” said Haynes. “God is so good! I could never thank him enough!!”
“Every day I’m gonna wake up like, ‘How can I bless someone? How can I show someone that type of love?’” she said.
The good deed even drew tears from shopper Yasmine Kirksey, who told WBMA she was “grateful.”
“I’m like, extremely blessed, shocked…but I’m happy!” she said.
An anonymous donor also paid off the remaining $25,000 in layaway balances at a different Walmart, in nearby Oxford, Alabama, the Anniston Star reported. It is not confirmed that it was the same man or someone else.
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