The anonymous benefactor regularly shops at Kmart’s Kapolei store, but Friday morning the older, local man was focused only on helping others.
He stepped up to Kmart’s layaway counter and immediately began paying off customers’ final $100 and $150 Christmas layaway purchases to the tune of $3,000.
And when he was done, the benefactor was hardly finished with his generosity.
He then walked throughout the store handing out $100 bills to grateful families.
Paul Katagiri, the Kapolei Kmart’s 48-year-old “sales coach,” had never witnessed such an act of holiday kindness in his 30 years in the retail business.
“It’s been a grouch economy for everybody and people are a little bit on the not-so-cheery side,” Katagiri said. “This renewed my faith in humankind. He was a true believer in what Christmas means: that it’s better to give than to receive.”
Katagiri knows the customer’s name but declined to reveal it to the Star-Advertiser on Sunday at the customer’s request.
The benefactor told Kmart employees that he was spurred to give away a total of about $5,000 Friday morning at the Kapolei Kmart after reading an Associated Press story tucked inside Friday’s Star-Advertiser. The story carried an Omaha, Neb., dateline and described a phenomenon of donors standing at Kmart layaway counters this year offering to pay off customers’ layaway purchases during a down economy.
“He said that he belongs to a family in Hawaii and he’s been blessed with family money and that he was impressed by a news article that ran on Friday of people going into Kmarts on the mainland and paying off layaways,” Katagiri said. “He wanted to share a little bit of Christmas joy with the people in Hawaii.”
The same story apparently inspired another Kmart shopper to pay off two layaway payments at the Nimitz Highway store. At the Waikele Kmart, a woman in her 20s made a single, final layaway payment of $112 for a customer she did not know.
It was all the young woman could afford, but she knew it would make a Christmas difference for at least one Hawaii family, said Mike Lane, Waikele Kmart’s store manager.
“They’re reading about it and they’re hearing about it,” Lane said Sunday. “It’s contagious.”
The young woman asked for one of Kmart’s associates by name “and the associate went to our list and found a layaway that had lots of toys on it,” Lane said.
As far as Lane knows, the layaway customer does not know that the anonymous woman made the final payment that will ensure those children will have presents for Christmas.
Ashley Hardie, a spokeswoman for Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said Sunday that a customer at Walmart’s Mililani store on Saturday also paid off layaway payments, but Hardie had no details.
Walmart reinstated its layaway program this year after discontinuing it in 2006, Hardie said.
“Across the country we’re typically seeing anonymous donors wanting to pay off layaway tickets with toys on them,” Hardie said. “A lot of customers exhibiting this type of generosity want to stay anonymous.”
The “layaway angel” at Kmart’s Kapolei store specifically targeted families who had layaway purchases for items other than just Christmas toys, Katagiri said.
“There were lots of toys for children but there were also a lot of basics, such as layaways for apparel,” Katagiri said. “People are not spending as much money on extravagant items this year. There are layaways for a lot of basic needs.”
The benefactor stood to the side and offered to make families’ final layaway payments to customers who initially hesitated, Katagiri said.
“Some people thought it was a joke,” Katagiri said. “Then customers started crying in disbelief. The customers were ecstatic. They couldn’t believe it. They were overjoyed that someone would actually be so giving.”
Word spread around the store and the mood noticeably lifted among the sales associates, Katagiri said.
After the man gave away his final $100 bill, his two hours of generosity suddenly ended without fanfare.
“He just slowly melted back into the crowd and disappeared,” Katagiri said. “But it renewed my faith in Christmas.”
