Secret Santa featured on 'Nightly News'

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - On Thursday, NBC's "Nightly News with Brian Williams" featured the story of the secret Santa who paid of layaway bills at the Plainfield Avenue Kmart last week.

The "Making a Difference" segment of the show featured several stories of random acts of kindness across the nation.

Among the stories were the  annual Christmas Snoopy display that one resident has put up for 40 years hosted by the city in Costa Mesa, California after the resident's home was foreclosed. And in Columbia, South Carolina, a father who had been deployed to Iraq returned home to his children just in time for Christmas.

The segment also featured the story of Mary Chapin, who had her Kmart layaway paid off by a secret Santa in Plainfield Township last week.

"I thank her. It's the best gift that I ever received, and it's the gift of believing in people," Chapin told 24 Hour News 8 on Dec. 6. "And believing that there's good out there, because you don't always see that."  

Chapin was one of the three people whose bill was paid off by the original secret Santa on Dec. 5. Those three bills totaled about $500.

The original secret Santa kicked off a trend. On Dec. 7, another anonymous giver spent $2,000 paying off 13 more layaway bills. On Dec. 8, a secret Santa paid off about $1,000 in layaway bills.

The trend has since spread across the nation.

On Saturday, Dec. 10, Kmart Assistant Manager Carol Vernon got a call from a manager in California. She was told someone saw the original story on a national website and walked into a West Coast Kmart to pay off $5,000 worth of layaway tabs.

And on Dec. 14, a man walked into a Kmart in Missoula, Montana and paid off several layaways to the tune of about $1,000, according to KRTV.com.

The Kmart employee to helped the secret Santa said that he asked to pay off layaway bills that were late in their payments and wouldn't be able to settle the bill before Christmas.

The man also told the Kmart employee that he was visiting from Michigan, where he'd recently paid off other Kmart layaways.

The man also said he doesn't have any family, and playing Santa makes his Christmas for him.

Watch the segment:

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