A 12-year-old girl from Barrie, Ont. is thanking the generous strangers who sent her gift cards and cash after she lost her wallet on Boxing Day.
Harper Fox told CTV Barrie that she had been saving up from Christmas and her birthday to decorate her room.
“I have everything planned,” she said.
But during a Boxing Day shopping trip with her dad to a local plaza, she lost her wallet, which contained $300 worth of gift cards.
Harper then asked her mother, Miranda Fox, to post a plea on Facebook in the hopes that someone would find and return the wallet
“I felt sick to my stomach because I could only imagine how sad that was for her,” Miranda told CTV Barrie.
Miranda posted a picture of the missing wallet and complete strangers from across the country quickly stepped forward with generous offers to replace its contents.
“Mom’s like, ‘Someone wants to donate $50,’” Harper recalled. “I’m like, ‘What?’”
“We had a bunch of servers in Alberta, in Calgary, who said, ‘We’ve pooled all out money together and we want to send something for Harper,’” Miranda added.
And most touching of all, Harper says, was a gift from a mother struggling with a sick newborn who said she just wanted to pay it forward.
“Why are you giving this to me?” Harper said. “Like, I would rather you spend it on your baby in Sick Kids than help me. Like, I don’t need this.”
Wanting to thank everyone for their generosity, the mother and daughter recently posted a video to Facebook. It’s already been viewed more than 26,000 times.
“I’m loved,” Harper said in that video. “Like, I’ve never felt so happy before in my life!”
To Miranda, the outpouring of support has left a lasting impression.
“It highlighted that there’s good in the world, that people are kind, that complete strangers will take care of a complete stranger,” she said.
For her part, Harper says that she still hasn’t spent a penny from the gift cards that she’s received. She says that she will wait two more weeks, and if her wallet turns up with her original gift cards, she’ll then donate everything.
