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Good Deed Makes Shopping Trip Memorable
sanitize

Escalon resident Pat Wood needed hand sanitizer.

And while it looked like her luck had run out, an unexpected gift made her day.

Wood said she had gone to the local Rite Aid in Escalon recently to pick up some essentials – including a bottle of hand sanitizer.

Unfortunately, a shopper ahead of her had picked up what turned out to be the last bottle in the store that day, as the clerk explained.

“I really needed it,” said Wood, a local senior citizen.

The other shopper, who was unfamiliar to her, made her purchases and left the store.

“She was a lady, I would say in her 30s,” Wood explained.

Disappointed but understanding of the scarcity of hand sanitizer in these COVID-19 days, Wood said she was surprised when the woman came back and sought her out, extending the bottle of hand sanitizer.

“She handed the bottle to me and said ‘you need it more than I do, I want you to have this’,” noted Wood.

The simple act of kindness made a huge impression.

Wood said she tried to refuse it but the woman insisted she take it. As a way of thanking her and ‘paying it forward’ – in a manner of speaking – Wood said she made a donation to C.A.R.E., the local food pantry, in honor of the woman’s gift, so others can be helped as well.

“There are good things going on, in spite of everything,” Wood said. “There’s so many good people in the world.”

Wood, who serves as historian at the Escalon Historical Society and Museum, said she is missing her work there and making contact with fellow museum volunteers and those that come to visit the Main Street museum, but is optimistic that eventually things will return to normal.

Until then, she continues to believe in the inherent goodness in people, something she has seen firsthand.

“It was very meaningful,” Wood said.