Paid in full

HAYDEN - Cindi Wimmer went to Walmart to return an item Friday. She left feeling like she had just seen and heard what the spirit of Christmas really is all about.

"I got real teary-eyed," the Coeur d'Alene woman said. "It just was so sweet."

Wimmer was in the customer service line at the Hayden store when a woman arrived and said she wanted to pay a layaway bill for someone - just a random person.

The woman said her husband had died in February, and she wasn't going to have a real happy Christmas.

"She said she wanted to be sure somebody else did," Wimmer said.

The clerk said they "absolutely" would help her take care of her request and led her to another area of the store to take care of the paperwork.

Wimmer said she later looked for the woman to invite her to her home for Christmas, but couldn't find her.

"I thought what she did was wonderful," Wimmer said.

It wasn't the first time it's happened this holiday season.

A nationwide movement has seen anonymous donors paying off strangers' layaways accounts at Kmart stores.

Kmart, which heavily promotes its layaway program, has seen dozens of cases of someone arriving at a store and offering to pay the balance due for a person they don't know.

It happened three times on Tuesday at the Coeur d'Alene Kmart, said employee Jeannette Peacock, and several more times on Friday.

A person that came in to the Neider Avenue store on Tuesday paid a nearly $400 bill. Another paid around a $1,000 to settle four layaway accounts.

"It's very awesome," Peacock said.

She said the bills are paid down to a penny, just to maintain the receipts and track the gifts still in the store. Customers who come in to pay off what they owe will be pleasantly surprised to learn they only a cent in debt.

"I know these people are probably going to be in tears when they come in and realize they only have to pay a penny," Peacock said.