Good Samaritans pay off strangers’ layaway balances at Wal-Mart

With only a few dollars to her name, on Monday evening Melody McKenzie went to cancel the layaway of the one present that she had hoped to buy her 12-year-old daughter for Christmas. McKenzie thought she owed $87, but when she told the clerk at Wal-Mart to put the toy back, she was told she only owed a penny.

The clerk told McKenzie that a good Samaritan had paid off her balance, save the penny. McKenzie said she was incredulous, asking the clerk more than once if she was kidding.

“You always hear about things like this, but you never ever think about being the recipient,” McKenzie said. “It just came at a time when it was so needed.”

Shawn Jacobson, manager at Wal-Mart Supercenter, 3300 Iowa St., said that since Thanksgiving about 10 individuals have come in and paid off strangers’ layaway balances, amounting to between $2,500 and $3,000 of payments.

McKenzie said she had previously paid $15 to put the karaoke machine on layaway, but Wal-Mart had called her a couple of days earlier and told her she either needed to pay the balance or cancel the layaway.

McKenzie hasn’t told her daughter yet and is saving the gift as a surprise. She was planning to sew her something, perhaps a Raggedy Ann doll, but she said she is much more excited to be giving her what she asked for.

“Words cannot express the feeling, unless you’ve been there,” McKenzie said. “Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to give her anything like that and now knowing that I can.”

McKenzie said she has degenerative joint disease and cannot work, and that she and her daughter live off $710 per month in disability benefits. McKenzie, whose daughter is her biological granddaughter whom she adopted, said neither of her daughter’s biological parents is in the picture.

McKenzie said she’d like to thank all the good Samaritans who have paid off strangers’ layaway balances, and hers especially — whom she referred to as their angel — for making such a difference.

“It’s a beautiful thing that you are doing, and even if you do not know how important it is, it’s so very important to those people that do not expect anything,” McKenzie said.