Secret Santa pays off layaway

One lucky shopper in Idaho Falls received an unexpected surprise Tuesday when she found out a mystery person had paid for items that she had put on layaway.

Layaway allows customers to put items on hold at a store and pay them off over a certain amount of time. During the holiday season, many people use layaway to pay for Christmas presents over time so they don’t have to buy all of them at once.

Christmas came early this year for LeNea Ricks, who received a call from an Idaho Falls Toys ‘R’ Us store employee informing her that the items she had on layaway were paid in full by an anonymous shopper.

At first Ricks didn’t believe it. “In the world that we live in right now, people are a little cynical and not so nice,” she said. “So it was a very nice surprise.”

Ricks was skeptical about falling victim to a phone scam. “I picked up the phone this morning and dialed the toy store to make sure that it was really Toys ‘R’ Us and not a scam,” she said.

Ricks heard about a Secret Santa paying off layaways on the news but didn’t think it would happen to her. “And I want to say thank you to whoever it was because it will make our holidays so much nicer and a lot easier on us,” she said.

Ricks said the surprise couldn’t have come at a better time.”My husband had surgery and he’s been out of work for four weeks, so Christmas is going to be really small at my house,” she said. “It’s a real blessing.”

The gifts were for her granddaughters and cost slightly less than $100. Ricks said she’s grateful to whoever did the good deed. “I realized that even the smallest things can be really meaningful to other people, so I will have to find a way to pay it forward,” she said.