I was ushered into a small office behind the customer service counter. The manager — a middle-aged woman with kind eyes — sat across from me and gently asked, “Where did you get this card?”
Her face changed completely. Her stern posture softened, and her eyes filled with emotion.
“You don’t know, do you?” she asked softly.
I shook my head, confused.
Then she told me something I will never forget.
Your grandmother was one of our “Silent Angels,” she said.
Over the last several years, my grandmother had been quietly purchasing gift cards from that very store — sometimes $20, sometimes $50, occasionally more — and leaving them with store employees with simple instructions: Give this to someone who needs it. But don’t tell them who it’s from.
She never wanted credit. Never signed her name. She’d quietly slip the card to a cashier or customer service worker, point to a mother struggling to count change, or a tired-looking man at the checkout, and say, “Please — just make sure they get this.”
She came in regularly, always modestly dressed, always polite, always a bit mysterious. They called her The Angel in Disguise.
A Changed Heart
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