Stories of Kindness from Around the World

REDWOOD CITY, CA - Imagine this: on Aug 11 shopper Jenni Ware gets 207 dollars of groceries at Trader Joe’s and realizes only at the checkout line that she has lost her wallet. Carolee Hazard, in line behind the distressed woman, graciously offers to cover the tab! Jenni goes home and sends Carolee a check for 300 dollars, and suggests that her benefactress treat herself to a massage with the leftover cash.

Carolee turned to her online Facebook community for advice on what they thought she should do with the 93 dollar gift. The idea Carolee choose was to donate the surplus to a local food bank.
Carolee not only sent in the money that Jenni had given her to Second Harvest Food Bank, but matched that amount herself. So did a Facebook friend. And another. And another. Kids have pitched in 93 cents. And since the story has been on Facebook’s own site, others are donating what they can.

So far, over 10,000 dollars of donations have come in from Iran, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Australia, Hungary, Sri Lanka and beyond to feed the hungry through local food banks.

Carolee has started the “93 Dollar Club” on Facebook, where people across the globe can easily read the story and comment on the good karma phenomenon. There are links on that page where people may donate to their own food banks close to them.  Says Carolee: “It’s been incredible to see this grow and how excited people are getting. I have told the story to my friends and they say it gives them goose bumps.”

Carolee and Jenni are no longer strangers. They’ve become Facebook friends and they’ve made a real-world connection that will likely stay with them the rest of their lives. Jenni remembers that she was at a “spiritual low” that day in the grocery store, and Carolee’s ‘tap on the shoulder’ reminded her of God and good people. “My faith in humanity is just huge,” Jenni said. “It’s just a reminder that there are these amazingly awesome people out there. And it also reminds me of how good I want to be.”

Being kind to strangers isn’t new for Carolee. She sometimes pays strangers’ bridge tolls, just to see their surprised faces in her rearview mirror.

[From Positive News US, Page 12]