SECRET SANTA BRINGS HOLIDAY CHEER TO FERGUSON
Gherica Lewis expected the worst when five squad cars — sirens blaring — stopped suddenly as she walked with her 10-month-old daughter and the girl’s father along the street in Ferguson, Mo., where riot police clashed with protesters for months after Michael Brown’s shooting death, making widespread arrests and deploying tear gas to control sometimes violent crowds.
“I thought I was going to jail,” she said.
Instead, Lewis, 24, and Kimoni Griffin, 23, received several $100 bills from a secret Santa who chose Ferguson for the Wednesday afternoon holiday cash giveaway to help the community recover after the August 2014 fatal shooting of Brown, who was black, by former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white.
The anonymous benefactor, a Kansas City businessman, asked not to be publicly identified to focus attention on the importance of charity rather than his own background.
“Our mission is to do random acts of kindness,” he said. “Kindness is the bridge between all people. And right now, Ferguson needs that kindness.”
The donor follows in the footsteps of his late friend Larry Stewart, who over a quarter-century disbursed an estimated US$1.3 million to the needy in Kansas City and other communities. Stewart publicly identified himself shortly before his 2007 death from esophageal cancer at age 58.
The donor and a dozen police “elves” from the Missouri Highway Patrol, FBI and Ferguson Police Department handed out the money.