Who is “Secret Santa”?
Broadcast journalist Steve Hartman who hosts a segment on CBS News called “On the Road,” travels to Reading, Pennsylvania where he spends time with a person he dubbed Secret Santa, assisting a broken man who was down on his luck to make a new start in his life.
This Secret Santa is “an anonymous businessman” that Hartman goes out with every year during the season of Christmas to do one of the most selfless acts of kindness known to man: handing out $100 bills of his own money to random people he encounters along the way.
Naturally, the people receiving this money could hardly believe this random stroke of fortune being handed to them, literally.
Hartman says that the anonymous Santa would even go as far as to spend more than $100,000 of his own money during one of the most joyous times of the year. Still, you have to ask yourself, just as Hartman did, “Is this really worth it?”
Absolute Selfless and Noble Intentions
Hartman inquired about Secret Santa’s intentions behind this noble cause as follows:
Hartman: “You don’t know what these people are going to do with this money, do you care?”
Secret Santa: “No! Because one of the things that I do not do is that I don’t judge.“
A Broken Man’s Faithful Encounter
A Good Man
The next scene involves an unbelievable happenstance surrounding a 30-year-old by the name of Thomas Coates. When Secret Santa handed him some of his $100 bills, Thomas neglected to take it at first as he didn’t earn it, to which Secret Santa replied, “You did earn it because I can tell you’re a good man.”
“A good man!” The last time Thomas heard those words were from his own mother. The story behind Thomas’s destitute existence is indeed worth telling.
Before he received his good fortune, Thomas had not worked over a year, was addicted to drugs and would often hock objects including his son’s own toys.
Pray to God
He would often spend his time going in and out of rehabilitation facilities, and in spite of knowing this, his girlfriend did not leave him and take their son with her. Nevertheless, she had almost run out of patience and the night before the faithful encounter with Secret Santa, Thomas, and his wife had another one of their money fights in which she advised him to start praying to God even though he didn’t believe in such things.
For the first time since his childhood, Thomas finally prayed with all his heart and the next thing you know, his luck turned around upon receiving Secret Santa’s charitable contribution. To have such “a random act of kindness occur just after a day he prayed was just too much of a coincidence for this atheist to bear” as Hartman put it.
A Start in the Right Direction
Thomas was overwhelmed with heavy positive emotions at that point, and from that moment onward, he made it his mission to get his life back on track by breaking his addiction, this time with God by his side.
Secret Santa finished off by saying that this is probably what Thomas needed all along to prevent him from going back to when his life was spiraling down and that to Secret Santa is worth every penny he donated to Thomas.
“Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness and caring to change a person’s life.”
That saying is proved beautifully in the full story below.
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