Mary realized she had forgotten her wallet while trying to pay for some groceries, but a kind boy, Mark, paid for her things. Sometime later, Mary and her daughter learned that Mark’s grandmother needed expensive surgery, so they decided to act, shocking the poor kid.
“Oh, geez. I must have forgotten my wallet in John’s car. I’m so sorry. I’ll have to come back for these things later,” Mary said to the cashier, who started picking up the items and putting them back. Meanwhile, Mary closed her purse, prepared to walk away when the boy behind her in line spoke up.
“Wait, ma’am. You don’t have many things anyway. I’ll pay for them,” he said. He couldn’t be older than 12, and Mary noticed that he didn’t look particularly well-off.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pexels
“Oh, no. I couldn’t put you out like that,” Mary countered.
“I insist, ma’am. Sometimes, we have to do good things, and karma will reward us later, right? That’s what my grandmother says all the time,” the boy said, placing his few things on the belt and paying for everything that Mary had picked out. Luckily, it was only a few essentials.
Mary’s daughter, Anastacia, was sick with the flu. She needed someone to watch the kids because her husband was in Europe on a business trip, so Mary decided to go to Santa Ana from San Diego, California. But her friend, John, had driven her up, and it seems she left her wallet in his car.
Once they got their groceries ready, Mary and the kid went outside. “Hey, I’m Mary Cummings. What’s your name?” she said conversationally.
“I’m Mark.”
“Thank you so much for what you did, Mark. It saved me a trip to the store. Listen, how about you give me your phone number so I can pay you back as soon as I get my wallet,” Mary suggested, and the kid wrote down his number on the receipt.
“Here, but don’t worry about it. There’s no rush. I live nearby anyway,” Mark said offhandedly.
“Although I also believe in paying it forward like you and your grandma, we have to pay off our debts,” Mary added, and they said goodbye.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pexels
She got home and told Anastacia about leaving her wallet in John’s car and the kid at the store who paid for her things. Mary only went there to buy a few things for chicken noodle soup, so it wasn’t anything important. “Still, it was nice to see a young man being so kind,” Mary finished her story while storing things and getting ready to make the soup.
“I agree. Although kids today are all so progressive, some of them can be pretty self-centered,” Anastacia.
“I don’t think this kid comes from a rich family, though. Maybe that’s why he’s so nice. But anyway, I’m worried that he might need that money urgently,” the older woman continued. Luckily, she called John, who agreed to come up to Santa Ana the following day and return her wallet.
***
Mary and Anastacia rang the bell at the address Mark had given them. Earlier, John came up, gave Mary her wallet, and Mary called the kid to return the money. He told her where he lived, and now they were right in front of his home.
The house was small and old. But it looked clean, and the garden was maintained. It was clear that these people didn’t have a lot of money, but they took pride in keeping it pretty. Mark answered the door.
“Hello, Mrs. Cummings,” Mark said upon opening the front door.
“Hey, Mark! This is my daughter, Anastacia. Here’s your money. Again, thank you so much for everything,” Mary told him with a kind smile.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pexels
“Thank you. You didn’t have to hurry,” the boy replied and looked behind him for a second. “Listen, I would invite you in, but I’m not supposed to have anyone over. My grandma would be mad.”
“Oh, where is she? Maybe, we can come later to meet her. Does she like pecan pie? Because we’re going to the bakery right now,” Anastacia added happily.
“Well, she’s actually at the hospital and won’t get out for a while,” Mark explained with a frown. Mary and Anastacia wanted to know more, so he continued. “She needs a huge surgery, and I started a GoFundMe, but I’ve been trying to promote it. It’s not that popular. For now, the hospital has understood, and they are keeping her in observation while I raise the money.”
“Oh, sweetie. You shouldn’t have to do that on your own,” Anastacia said, concerned.
“We don’t have anyone else. It’s only us,” Mark shrugged. Mary and Anastacia looked at each other and came to a wordless decision.
“Give me the link to the GoFundMe, and your grandmother’s name. Also, come with us to the bakery. We’ll go visit her and see if the doctor lets her eat some pie,” Mary offered, although it was more of a demand.
“Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
“We have to,” Anastacia insisted, and Mark went with them.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pexels
After buying some pies, they went to the hospital to meet Mark’s grandmother, Mrs. Julie Strada. They talked to her for a while, and Mark decided to stay with her that night, so Mary and Anastacia left.
When they got home, Anastacia shared the GoFundMe link with anyone she could think of, and she also donated a few hundred dollars. But Mary felt so hopeless. “They need so much money for this surgery. I don’t know if sharing the link is enough,” she breathed sadly.
“Let’s think,” Anastacia said, looking at her computer. “How about we share the story of the boy? I mean how he helped you, although they need the money so much. I mean, he couldn’t know you were going to pay it back. Maybe it could go viral? Let’s try Reddit.”
“That’s a one-in-a-million thing, Anastacia,” Mary replied skeptically.
“We’ll see,” the younger woman said with a smile and started writing everything that happened on Reddit. She posted it on several subreddits and her Twitter.
For illustration purposes only. | Source: Pexels
At first, there were only a few commenters, but thousands of people had read the story and donated to the cause after a few days. They still needed a lot more donations to reach the goal of $230,000, which was the cost of Mrs. Strada’s entire treatment.
But surprisingly, a famous new outlet picked up the story, shared it, and even interviewed Mary and Mark for their article. The GoFundMe project reached way beyond their goal, and they were ecstatic. Mark couldn’t believe it. He had only paid around $20 for what Mrs. Cummings needed at the store, and she somehow found a way to pay it back and more.
What can we learn from this story?
- Helping others can change your life. Mark helped an older woman at the store, not knowing how hard she would work to pay him back for his gesture.
- There are still good people around the world. Tons of viral stories have gotten people enough donations to pay for their family members and even their pets’ treatments, which proves how good people can be.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.
If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a man who had to put his baby up for adoption when he was a teenager.
This account is inspired by our reader’s story and written by a professional writer. Any resemblance to actual names or locations is purely coincidental. All images are for illustration purposes only. Share your story with us; maybe it will change someone’s life.
Inside the life of Debra Paget and why Elvis was ‘obsessed’ with her
Debra Paget was extremely beautiful in her prime and charmed millions of Americans when she starred in Elvis Presley’s film debut, Love Me Tender.
The talented actress was ”touched by the hand of God,” according to legendary director Cecil B DeMille.
Apparently, even the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ became obsessed with her…
Debra Page was born on August 19, 1933, in Denver, Colorado. Her real was Dabralee Griffin – but the actress changed her name as she moved towards movie stardom.
Raised in a showbiz family, Debra’s parents moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s so that they all could be closer to developing the film industry in Hollywood. (Debra’s two sisters, Tala Loring and Lisa Gaye, also had substantial film & TV careers).
Debra, who always wanted to be a dancer, has described herself as a ”post-depression” baby. She came into the world during a devastating and prolonged economic recession. Her family didn’t have much, but Debra held her parents in high regard.
“When I looked back, we had so much love in our home,” Debra said when being interviewed by Dale Evans Rogers.
‘Most beautiful legs in the world’
Pushed by her mother, Debra enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School when she was 11.
The talented young girl landed never doubted herself, landing her first professional job aged eight. Soon after that, she starred in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Her motion picture career began at the age of 14, and her big break came in 1950 when she was cast in Broken Arrow. Co-starring alongside James Stewart, Debra Paget portrayed a Native American maiden called Sonseeahray (“Morningstar”).
Debra’s “exotic” looks won her several roles in adventure dramas, and she soon earned the reputation as the only starlet who had never been kissed.
In the 1950s, she earned the title “The most beautiful legs in the world” when the National Association of Hosiery Manufactures polled 15,000 people in the industry. The deeply religious Debra won by a wide margin, according to The Baltimore Sun.
As a 14-year-old, Debra had signed an exclusive contract with 20th Century Fox. But it was when Paramount Pictures borrowed Debra for The Ten Commandments that she made her most successful movie.
Debra played the part of Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille’s giant biblical, spectacular movie. The blue-eyed Debra had to wear brown contact lenses – something that caused quite some trouble for her.
“If it hadn’t been for the lenses, I wouldn’t have gotten the part. They were awful to work in because the klieg lights heated them up,” she said.
The movie, which won seven Academy Awards, changed her life forever.
”It was probably the highlight of my career, ” Debra said.
Meeting Elvis
Debra Paget was a 22-year-old established Hollywood star when she stepped onto the set of Love Me Tender. Back then, she was probably the most beautiful actress of the Hollywood Golden age. And that is saying something.
She and Elvis Presley first met months earlier when both appeared on the Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956. It was the moment when Elvis shocked conservative America by gyrating his famous, or infamous, pelvis during his now-iconic rendition of Hound Dog.
“Although I usually don’t form an opinion of a person until I have met him,” she explained. “Frankly I looked forward to my first meeting with Elvis Presley with mixed emotions. I’d heard and read a lot about this new young singing sensation from Tennessee—and most of it was not complimentary.”
The young singer surprised Debra in many ways during their first, memorable meeting. As a born-again Christian, you might think that Debra disliked The King, but it was quite the opposite.
When Mr. Berle introduced the 21-year-old rising star to Debra, he firmly grabbed her hand and said: “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Paget.”
Elvis then shook her mother’s hand with ”equal vigor,” excused himself, and a couple of minutes later came back with a chair for her.
“We were together for only a couple of hours but sometimes you can learn more about a person in a short span of time than in weeks of seeing one another constantly. I felt I did. From the very beginning, Elvis impressed me as a pleasant, sincere, obliging young man,” Debra recalled.
The proposal
A few months later, Debra starred opposite Elvis in Love Me Tender – his first movie. According to Daily Express, the singer became obsessed with his co-star. He believed that Debra was ”the most beautiful girl he had ever seen” and even visited her parent’s house.
“From the time he first came to the house, my folks have considered Elvis a member of the Paget clan—a feeling which, I believe, he reciprocated,” Debra explained.
But Debra and Elvis’s relationship was more family-oriented than a whirlwind romance – at least in the eyes of the young actress.
“I was very shy, very quiet and very immature for my age. I was in my very early 20’s but I was emotionally more like a 16-year-old. Elvis and I just sort of came together like a couple of children really.”
Elvis, however, seems to have thought otherwise.
“Following the film, he did ask me to marry him but my parents objected to my getting married. I cared about Elvis, but being one not to disobey my parents, that did not take place,” Debra shared.
In the end, Debra turned Elvis down – she had already fallen in love with Howard Hughes, a famous film producer and billionaire.
Debra would later marry actor and singer David Street, but she always spoke fondly of Elvis. And Elvis didn’t forget Debra either – many think she did set the template for Elvis’ fixation with the ‘Debra Paget look.’ For example, it was reported that young Priscilla Beaulieu changed her hair and make-up when she learned about Debra.
Debra left the entertainment industry in 1964 and is now 89 years old. Sadly, there is not much information about her life today; Debra seems to live a quiet and private life out of the limelight.
Elvis and Joan Blackman
Interestingly, Elvis’s proposal to Debra in the late 1950s wasn’t the only time he wanted to marry a co-star. After shooting Blue Hawaii with Joan Blackman in 1961, he wanted to tie the knot with her as well – while he was dating Priscilla.
Joan Blackman, who looked very much like Priscilla, has shared what really happened during the making of Blue Hawaii.
“When we first set eyes on each other (in 1957), there was a spark, a magic in the air… There was just that special something between us, sometimes so warm and wonderful you could almost reach out and touch it,” she told the Midnight Globe newspaper in 1977.
In the sensational interview, Joan Blackman said that Elvis ”really wanted” her as his wife and that he repeatedly begged her to appear in his movies, but she turned him down each time.
“I wanted parts because of my ability, not because I was dating Elvis,” she stated.
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