MAPLE GROVE, Minnesota — Employees at the Cub Foods in Maple Grove shared some holiday kindness to a woman who needed it.
"Me, personally, that's just the way I am," said Annie Sorenson, who has worked with Cub Foods for 31 years.
Last week, Sorenson was at the register checking out customers when she noticed something going on near her lane.
"An elderly lady was at the lane in front of me and I noticed she had a look of distress on her face," Sorenson recalled.
That lady was Sharron Pechek, 85, of Maple Grove.
"The tears started to come down because I thought I've got four big bags of groceries and I thought... now what am I going to do?" Pechek said.
Her credit card wasn't working so she went home to try and figure out the problem. When it couldn't get fixed, Pechek went back to the store to explain she would have to leave the groceries behind. It was more than $50 worth of food.
"I said, 'I'm not going to send you out here without your groceries. That's just not right. I'm going to take care of this for you,'" Sorenson said.
Cub's customer service manager, Krista Ponting, told Sorenson she didn't have to pay for the groceries.
Instead, "I just explained to the customer that it was on Cub and she cried," Ponting said.
"Well now the real tears really started flowing," Pechek recalled.
Pechek's credit card wasn't working because her husband is the primary card holder. He recently moved into a memory care facility for his dementia and is no longer able to shop. When Pechek tried updating the address, the company cancelled the card without telling her.
"I think perhaps in lieu of going through all that, I was just stressed out. And when I didn't have that card, I thought, 'Oh my goodness,'" Pechek said.
Sorenson got a team together to pack up Pechek's groceries and bring them to her car. She then gave Pechek a hug.
"That will be something that I'll have in my heart forever," Pechek said.
One of Pechek's daughters tried paying at the Cub Foods later but Ponting refused to take it.
"So we said, 'Go do something good for somebody else or do something good for yourself,'" Ponting said.
Pechek said she wrote a letter to Cub, thanking them. She's also planning to pass it on with her own act of kindness.
She said, "I hope people look at this and say... including myself... we should be more giving."
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