Wrong Number Turns Into Thanksgiving Gift

When a woman called the wrong number and left a message on a stranger's machine, she received far more than she had bargained for.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on November 24 2010

Image: iStockphoto

The day before Thanksgiving, Lucy Crutchfield left a message on her daughter’s answering machine. The despair was evident in her voice.

Crutchfield owed a mortgage payment on her home, but her daughter wasn’t even able to afford food for the coming week. So, Crutchfield left a message saying that she would send money for the groceries—even though that meant she wouldn’t have enough to pay her monthly mortgage bill.

But as it turned out, Crutchfield had dialed a wrong number, leaving her heartbreaking message on a stranger’s machine.

Instead of simply deleting the message, the stranger on the other end, San Diego real estate agent Virginia Saenz, decided to call her back.

“On the phone, she sounded so desperate for her daughter, it broke my heart,” Saenz told NBC San Diego.

When she reached Crutchfield, she told her not to worry. Saenz would help out Crutchfield’s daughter, so that Crutchfield could still make her mortgage payment.

Lucy Crutchfield was blown away by the stranger’s generosity—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Times were very tough, and she’d recently gone into foreclosure on her own home. The mortgage payment was for her mother’s house. Her mother had recently passed away, and Crutchfield was struggling to stay on top of her debts, too. “I thought I was going to lose that house, too,” she said.

Thanks to Saenz’s offer, she was able to make that payment, while Saenz went to the grocery store to pick up food for Crutchfield’s daughter’s family. Crutchfield’s daughter said she only needed milk and eggs, but Saenz decided to go on a shopping spree for the family, picking up enough food for the rest of the month, plus a turkey, stuffing, and all the trimmings to make a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

The next day, while sitting down to her own Thanksgiving dinner, Saenz gave thanks for the fact that she was able to provide help to a stranger in need. That random act of kindness “made the day special for me,” she said.

Filed under: General Interest, Heroes,

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