Secret Santa Pays Off More Than $46K in Layaway Items at Pennsylvania Walmart

A secret Santa, known only as “Santa B,” offered a Pennsylvania Walmart store manager a deal he could not refuse.

“Santa B” offered to pay off the entire cost of the store’s layaway items, totaling $46,265.59, CNN reported.

“It was complete disbelief,” store manager Ryan Kennedy told CNN. “It was definitely a great gesture. I was completely shocked.”

After Kennedy spoke with the anonymous caller, he arranged a time with Santa B for someone to drop off the check at the store’s Everett location.

Kennedy and his store received the check on Wednesday, and since then, he’s been calling up the 194 people with layaway accounts to tell them that they have been paid off.

“Some individuals were just brought to tears when they were notified about it,” Kennedy said.

Layaway service allows people to put items on hold at the store while they pay them off in installments.

Kennedy said many of the items were Christmas gifts.

“Well, my daughter played the message before I got there,” shopper Christa Morton told CNN affiliate WJAC. “I asked if anyone called. She said, ‘You’re going to want to hear the message for yourself, so I said, ‘Am I going to be upset or mad?’ and she said, ‘It’s going to make you cry.’ So I walked upstairs and it was Walmart saying that our Christmas layaway can be picked up and that it was completely paid for.”

This is not the first time an anonymous donor has generously paid off layoff items at Walmart. Kennedy said that “Santa B” has also paid off accounts in Harrisburg and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, in previous years. In 2015, an anonymous donor visited two Ohio Walmarts and paid off 106,000 layaway items. That same year, a secret Santa paid off $200,000 worth of layaway items at two Florida locations.