South Dakota Mother Thanks God After Good Samaritan Pays for Diapers at Walmart
A South Dakota mother is thanking God after a stranger paid for her son's diapers at a local Walmart. The generous deed was filmed by another customer and has gone viral since it was posted to Facebook.
Katie Kanefke of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was recently in the checkout line at the local Walmart, purchasing four boxes of diapers for her four-month-old son, Marcus. To Kanefke's chagrin, she was told by the Walmart employee that she could only price match one of the boxes, and because Kanefke and her husband are on a tight budget, she was forced to discard the other three boxes to the side.
That's when fellow customer Carol Flynn, a 73-year-old retired March of Dimes director, stepped in to help.
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"It looks to me like you had four boxes of Pamper's and you're only buying one.' So I said, 'Do you have children?' 'Yes, I have a little boy who is 4-months-old and he uses a lot of diapers.' And I said, 'I think you need the other three boxes then," Flynn recalled to KSFY of her interaction with Kanefke.
A video, filmed by customer Jason Yoshino, then shows Flynn warmly patting Kanefke on the back as she takes out her charge card to pay for the other three boxes of diapers. The women are seen laughing as Kanefke graciously thanks Flynn for her generous act of kindness.
"I said, 'Yeah, it's okay. It's alright.' I said, 'Someday, you'll do this.' And I said, 'Paying it forward is kind of a neat thing to do and I'm sure sometime you'll pay it forward to somebody else," Flynn told Kanefke.
Moved by the interaction, fellow customer Yoshino, who was waiting in the checkout line behind the two women, posted the video he took on Facebook. The short video quickly went viral, being shared over 6,000 times and liked over 25,000 times.
Flynn told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that she chose to help Kanefke because she thinks it's important to pay it forward. "I just think we should do things like that. That's kind of my thinking."
Kanefke added to the Argus Leader that Flynn's help was "an awesome statement of what God's love does."
"If you ever needed a sign or act that shows God cares for his people and provides for them," Kanefke continued, "this is it."
Yoshino, a wedding entertainer, has also said that witnessing the event has touched his heart. "There are some amazing people in this world. What a way to end such a beautiful day to witness such an amazing act of kindness," the fellow customer wrote on his Facebook page after posting the video.
