A crumb from a reader in Redlands, California

As reported in the Illinois Belleville News-Democrat, Stanford Kipping, 82, and his wife Patty, 70, were caught between a rock and a hard place. Should they keep up payments on their 1998 Buick, or buy prescription medicines they need to stay well? They decided to buy the medicine, and before long a repo man named Jim Ford came and towed their Buick away. "When I got home that night," Ford recalls, "I said to myself, 'They are a real nice elderly couple. I gotta do something. I can't just take their car.'"

Using the online service "GoFundMe," he raised more than $3,500 in one night. After paying the fee for services, he paid the bank the $2,501 the Kippings owned on the car. Then he put $1,000 in cash into an envelope and a co-worker bought the Kippings a frozen turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Ford fixed the old Buick's headlights, topped off the radiator and changed the oil, and then hooked up the car for the return tow to the Kipping's home. Stanford and Patty Kipping didn't know what they would do without their car, and when they got it back paid off, with a turkey and a $1,000 gift, they called it "a miracle come true." It was the best Christmas gift they could have wished for.