Man Spends $540 and Buys Out Girl Scout Cookie Stand To Get Girls out of the Cold
UPDATE, Feb. 26, 2019: After the publication of this article, The Smoking Gun reported that the man who purchased the Girl Scout cookies, 46-year-old Detric Lee McGowan, sometimes known as “Fat,” was arrested Tuesday morning by Drug Enforcement Agents as one of 11 defendants named in a 22-count U.S. District Court indictment.
McGowan has been charged with conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs, cash smuggling and other crimes.
While McGowan is obviously innocent unless and until proven guilty, these accusations cannot but cast a pall over his otherwise admirable act of kindness.
The Facebook post from Kayla Dillard about the sale has apparently — and understandably — been removed or made private, and we have therefore removed it from our article.
An unidentified man spent $540 dollars on Girl Scout cookies so that the girls could get out of the cold on a chilly night in South Carolina.
Girl Scouts Emerson and Maya, members of Troop 1574, were working a cookie booth outside of a grocery store in Mauldin, South Carolina.
Hours passed by and temperatures started to drop, but plenty of boxes remained to be sold.
The girls’ selling adventure took an uplifting turn when a man walked up to the booth and bought seven boxes of cookies. He paid for his order with $40 and told the girls to keep the change.
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But then the man came back and said something that left everyone speechless.
“Pack up all of your cookies,” the man said. “I’m taking them all so y’all can get out of this cold.”
Kayla Dillard, the cookie manager who was with the girls that night, said the man spent $540 dollars buying every box they had.
“The girls were almost speechless,” Dillard told Yahoo Lifestyle. “Then they got busy trying to calculate his total.”
Dillard said she does not know who the man is, but she was able to get a picture of him standing beside a grateful Emerson and Maya.
“What an amazing soul,” Dillard told CNN. “It was about 34 degrees outside that night and we were there for about two hours already before he came.”
Dillard posted the photo on Facebook where it quickly started circulating. But so far, the man’s identity remains a mystery.
“He mentioned he owned several businesses,” Dillard said. “We assume he was going to give the cookies away.”
Dillard said the man’s generous actions changed the entire trajectory of the troop’s cookie sale plan.
“We actually had to cancel some of our booth sales this weekend because we didn’t have cookies to sell at the booth because he purchased them all,” Dillard told CBS News.
The troop had set a goal of selling 3,200 boxes, but thanks to the mystery man, they have sold closer to 5,000.
Even if the man’s name remains unknown, this troop will have a memory that will stay alive for years to come.
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