Ashley Fox was shopping at her local Walmart in Knoxville TN with her three-year-old son, Norris, who has non verbal autism. He wanted a stuffed puppy, but it cost more than she expected, so she put it back.
Ashley says Norris went into complete meltdown mode. She rushed him out of the store as fast as she could because he was screaming and crying and as she was struggling to get Norris into his car seat. "This lady comes up behind me and she pulls this puppy out, and she says, 'is this what he was wanting?' and I said, 'oh my god yes it is,' and I hand it to him and he just calmed down, I'm able to buckle up. And it was, it was, it was great. I thanked her and I offered to pay for this puppy and she wouldn't let me she said that she understood that she has kids. I just really want her to know that, like, it made his night and made his day, like as you can see, he won't put it down. He's obsessed with it. He loves it. And I just think it was a really beautiful thing that she did".
The grateful mom posted thanked her and took to Facebook to share that Norris and his new favorite toy are inseparable, thanks to this woman’s random act of kindness. That post went viral so local CBS affiliate WVLT asked her about it and she told them; "I didn’t expect, you know, when I made this post I did not expect it to grow up the way that it did, but you know I’m so glad because people, you know, they’re just comforting and they love the story and I love that because this lady also like I just really hope she sees it, I just, I really want her to know just how wonderful she really was,” said Fox. “This woman, she didn’t judge, you know she literally she just helped me. And I think that that is just a lesson learned, you know, for everybody because if more people were like that I feel like we have a lot less negativity.”