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OC Man Spends $15,919.61 To Pay Off All Layaways at Local Kmart
Vintage Kmart photo by Joe+Jeanette Archie via Flickr
'Tis the season to almost kinda wish you had some stuff on layaway at Kmart, since this year the thing seems to be for donors to swoop in and pay off all the accounts en masse. It happened last week to the shoppers of the Kmart on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, reports the OC Register, when a man who saw a story on KTLA about the Michigan woman who paid off the balances of strangers in her area decided to do the same locally.
David Wilson of Laguna Beach got in touch with the store, and asked for a tally of layaway account balances. He ended up writing a check to the store for $15,919.61, and the store clerk who made all the calls to the customers heard a lot of shock and tears of joy over the phone.
Wilson, who owns several car dealerships, says the nearly $16k gift to Kmart shoppers was actually a gift for his wife Holly; he wrote the amount he gave the store on a slip of paper and tied a bow around it and presented it to her. She said it was the best birthday gift she'd ever received.
Apparently others have pitched in to pay off layaways at the same Kmart, including a little girl who brought in her piggy bank filled with $47. A total of $8,000 worth of layover accounts have been paid off by people other than the account holders.
And it's happening at Kmarts around the nation. The donors are being called "Layaway Angels," which is how clerks describe the donation to bewildered customers. The OC Register says holiday "Layaway Angeles" are "the biggest trend since gourmet food trucks." Suddenly the glut of gourmet food trucks doesn't seem like such a laughable thing; that many big-hearted "Layaway Angels" is downright awesome.
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