A good Samaritan has offered to replace the $500 Christmas money an Alexandra woman lost this week.
The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, was yesterday moved to tears by the gesture.
"It's a very kind offer. I'm so grateful for it," she said.
The donor, who lives in Lake Roxburgh village and said he preferred to remain anonymous, said that when he was struggling some years ago, someone had given him money to buy firewood.
"At the time I was injured and couldn't work and I've never forgotten the kindness of that person and how what they did changed my situation."
The man said he won a substantial sum of money in a casino a few years ago and invested it, donating the proceeds since then to various "good causes".
The woman is still waiting to find out if the money she failed to remove from an automatic teller machine was "sucked back in" by the machine.
