Wooden Shoe love to be able to do this

Who hasn't walked into a Payless shoe store and wanted to buy everything in the place???

(I haven't; they didn't carry Rockports, but anyway.)

Down in Arkansas this summer, as the Payless chain, having pulled out the stopper, was letting everything run down the drain, in walked Carrie Jerrigan to see about some closeout deals for herself and her family.

Her daughter found a pair of really cool Avengers shoes, but the little girl told Carrie they weren't for her...

"She has the biggest heart, and she said, 'There is a boy in my class that loves Avengers and his shoes are too small, could you buy him these?' And I was like, 'of course,'" Jerrigan told Fort Smith, Arkansas, station KFSM-TV.

Somewhere between that moment in the aisle and the time Ms Jerrigan got to the register, she had an idea. Since the store was closing, how much would they want for the entire stock?  Everything must go, right? Let it all go at once!


"I could see the clerk's face, her wheels start to turn. And she finished checking me out and said, 'Can I have your number?'" she recalls. And when she was home later on, the Payless district manager called her up.

He said sure, she could buy out the store BUT they had just gotten in a whole new shipment of shoes, so the inventory - and the price - was going up.

She had planned to pay for 200 to 300 pairs of shoes, but she had to Paymore at Payless (sorry, I had to say it) because there were almost 1500 pairs of shoes on hand (!) by the time she got back, checkbook in hand.

"The next thing you know, we are trying to figure out how to get almost 1,500 shoes home with us that day," she said.

Somehow, they got all those shoes home, and filled their house with shoe boxes. 

Earlier this month, she gave all the shoes away to kids at the Alma Middle School. And the Jerrigan family also teamed up with the Kibler Baptist Church to give out school supplies.

Mrs Jerrigan is just happy that she had this opportunity to instill the spirit of generosity in her children.

"If you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they say be kind. And so, I don't care what they do in life as long as they are kind and good people," she said. "It just reiterates to me that their hearts are in the right place. And if it's in the right place, they can do amazing things."

People love to quote from the Bible, so here's one to work into a conversation:
"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required"
Luke 12:48