Kindness: Upstate New York’s specialty!

By TARA BARNWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

Picture this: you’re at a local grocery store. In a hurry. You get what you need and run out of the store and it’s pouring rain. You get home and realize you left your purse in the shopping cart in the parking lot. Your stomach tightens as you remember you had your monthly rent, in cash, in a bank envelope in your purse. You feel sick.

Not a good situation, but this happened to a young woman in Cooperstown just last week. She was devastated when she went back to the store parking lot and found her purse had been turned in, but the envelope gone. Now what is she going to do?

This woman, who asked to go by Kristy for this story, simply posted on Facebook’s “Celebrate Cooperstown” page asking for whomever took her rent money to please return it.

“I have an eight-year-old daughter and I’m a single mom,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was devastated.”

“Rent is due, my daughter’s birthday is soon, the holidays are coming. I wasn’t going to judge or question anyone, I just really needed that money back.”

Many responded, as people do on Facebook, offering prayers and hope.

But a few kind souls opened a Venmo account for her. Donations started rolling in.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Kristy said. “These people don’t even know me and they were donating money to help me out. I genuinely don’t know how to express how grateful I am at everyone’s generosity. This year has been rough, I lost everything because of domestic violence in my house.”

“I went from crying tears of despair to tears of happiness and gratefulness,” she said. “The money was way over what I had lost. I don’t even know who coordinated it, it was just a whole community coming together. My heart is so full.”

We all need a story like this right before Thanksgiving!