Random Act Of Kindness

Each month, one of the AHA Crew receives $20 and is asked to initiate a “Random Act of Kindness.” For December, we asked our Calgary PR Coordinator, Kim Wong, to do something nice for someone in the world. Kim took the assignment to heart –  she tells us about what she did below.

On Friday, I was told that it was my turn to do a Random Act of Kindness on behalf of AHA. My first thought was how do I take the $20 given to me and turn it into more than $20? I remembered that the previous day I saw an advertisement at McDonald’s that if you buy a $10 gift card you also get a coupon for a free chicken wrap and drink. So I went to McDonald’s and purchased two gift cards and made a plan to give the gift cards and free coupons to some people in need.

On Sunday, my husband and I drove to downtown Calgary right before lunchtime and set off to find four people who appeared to need some help. It was -20C plus a wind chill and we walked up and down the street looking for the perfect recipients of our gifts. The first was a man asking for change. I said, “I don’t have change, but I have a gift card for McDonald’s if you would like to buy yourself some lunch?” He smiled and said, “Yes thank you, that would be great.” We handed him the $10 card and set off on our way. I spotted him a few minutes later going into the downtown McDonald’s.

The next recipients were a man and woman standing together outside of the McDonald’s. They were both carrying a load of items on their backs and looked very cold. I asked them if they would like a coupon for free lunch? They looked at us with wide smiles and huge eyes and said, “Yes thank you!” We gave them the two coupons for chicken wraps and the woman said, “You are so generous. Merry Christmas to you!” We walked away, and I wiped away the tears streaming down my frozen cheeks. We had definitely made their day brighter!

Then we wandered around for 10 minutes in the blistering cold with the last $10 gift card burning a whole in my pocket. We spotted a man with two artificial legs sitting in a wheelchair and we nodded at each other in agreement that he was going to be our last recipient. He asked us for change and I said, “We are out of change, but we have a gift card for McDonald’s if you would like to buy yourself some food?”  He said, “Yes, how much is it for?”  I told him $10 and he said, “Yes, thank you.”

We then walked back to our warm car and talked about how great it was to have been given the opportunity to help a few people in need today.

Kim Wong

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