A few weeks before the giveaway, a man walked into the McDonald’s on upper Main Street in Haverhill, Massachusetts, handed the cashier on duty a wad of cash, and said little more than that he wanted to pay for everyone’s meals until the money ran out. Then he left. Nobody got his name.
The staff started using the money right away, then thought better of it and called the franchise owner. Christine Yee, who runs the restaurant with her father David, was not immediately moved. She was suspicious. “I was actually skeptical at first and became concerned the money might be counterfeit,” she told WHAV-TV.
Several thousand dollars in cash from an anonymous walk-in is, reasonably, the kind of thing you check on. The Haverhill Police Department confirmed the bills were real.
Once she knew the gift was legitimate, Christine decided not to spend it quietly. She deposited the cash and took time to plan an event around it, which is how one man’s anonymous gesture turned into what she billed as “A Random Act of Kindness Day.” On a Wednesday afternoon between 1:30 and 5 p.m., anyone who walked up to the counter ate free. By the end, the Yees had given away 356 meals.
Christine also did her homework on whether this sort of thing happens. “I checked in with McDonald’s corporate headquarters, and no one had ever heard of anything quite so generous,” she said. “We have customers in the drive-through regularly offer to pay for the car behind them, but that’s just one order.”
For the event itself, Christine brought in Grimace and had cards printed to hand out with each meal, with red and yellow hearts on them, explaining where the free food had come from: “You have just received a random act of kindness. An anonymous Haverhill neighbor has paid for your McDonald’s meal today. We hope this brightened your day. If you feel compelled, pay it forward to someone in your own way.”
Christine had been a little nervous about how the day would go, particularly whether people would take advantage. They didn’t. Customers ordered normally. The Yees added a contribution of their own, donating to Ronald McDonald House charities.
As for the man who started it, they never learned who he was or why he did it. “Love was felt throughout the Haverhill community,” Christine told WBTS-TV, “and every customer was asked to pay it forward in their own special way.”
