Six years ago, when my daughter was just a few months old, my husband and I went grocery shopping the week before Christmas. As we were walking in we noticed an older man and his dog sitting outside, watching us. We thought nothing of it, assuming he was probably just people watching, and did our holiday grocery shopping in preparation for a week full of Christmas potlucks that we really couldn't afford (our parents are all divorced and remarried so we had quite a few to attend).

As we were getting in line the man and his dog came behind us with just a Christmas teddy bear, and we insisted that he go ahead of us since our groceries would take a while. He said no at first but finally relented and went ahead of us, bought the bear, then rushed outside. The whole thing struck us as odd but we shrugged it off.

When we went outside he was standing by the door with the teddy bear and a card, and told us that he had been planning on paying for our groceries but when we insisted on having him go ahead of us it messed up the system he had set up with the cashier. He gave the teddy to my daughter (who still has it) and gave us a card with more than enough money to cover our groceries, which he had run to withdraw from the ATM while we were still in the store. The card had his dog's paw print on the inside and wished us a Merry Christmas.

He told us that he does this every year, and will wait outside looking for young families who he can help during the expensive holiday season.

It was such an unexpected and beautiful thing for him to do, and I can only imagine how many people he has impacted over the years. I always hope that I will run into him and his sweet golden retriever so I can tell him thank you, and how much that meant to us.

Image is for representation only; not the actual person