Mom Was Short on Cash for Daughter’s Toys When an Eavesdropping Cashier Stepped In. Then the Dad Tracked Down the Employee

On a whim, Chelsea Provencher of Manchester, N.H. took her 8-year-old daughter, Violet, to a local Toys R Us on Black Friday to buy some toys using Violet’s birthday money and gift cards. After choosing three toys for herself and two gifts for her sister, the little girl and her mom made their way to register to pay. But when they got there, Provencher realized something terrible: They didn’t have enough to cover their purchase.

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“We get there and ring everything in, and I’m $5.52 short,” the mom told WMUR. Mortified to have left her purse at home, she told her daughter that they’d have to put one of the toys back.

But then a nearby cashier, 17-year old Sheilla Nelson, heard what was going on, and decided to intervene. She walked over and took out her own credit card, insisting that she’d cover the rest.

“She just looks over and said, ‘You know what, I got this. I’ll cover it for you,'” Provencher recalled. “We said no three times, but she was so persistent. I gave her a hug trying not to cry.”

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When Provencher arrived home and told her husband, Roger, about what had happened, he immediately raced back to the store. He found the kind cashier and handed her a gift card worth $552–100 times the cost of her earlier gift–and told her to keep it at the register and use it for other families who might be a few bucks short this holiday season.

“I was just very touched by her willingness to do something nice for a complete stranger,” the father said. “She had an impact on my daughter and I wanted to give her the opportunity to help a lot of other people in this month before Christmas.”

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But the “pay it forward” attitude didn’t stop there: When Toys R Us management heard what happened, they returned Roger Provencher’s generous donation to him and offered to make one in his name instead, still to be used for customers in need.

Talk about kindness setting off a chain reaction! See the family’s story here.

via WMUR

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