Anonymous family pays Goodwill shoppers' bills

VALPARAISO, Ind. — The manger of a northwest Indiana Goodwill store says an anonymous family brightened customers' holiday shopping over the weekend by paying their bills and handing out Christmas card envelopes containing money.

Goodwill Industries northwest Indiana district manager Erika Miller says a couple, their two children and a grandmother arrived Saturday at the Valparaiso store and began handing customers Christmas card envelopes with money inside.

She tells The Times of Munster that after the envelopes were gone the family sat in chairs near the front for a while and paid customers' purchases.

Miller says the family said that a couple of years ago they were so cash-strapped they could only shop at Goodwill stores and “their Christmas gift to themselves was being able to give back to everybody else.”