Pay It Forward: Lafayette resident displaced by Katrina gets gift of kindness
At KLFY News 10, we want to take the opportunity to give back to the community, so we’ve teamed up with Bob Giles and Giles Automotive to do just that.
We go out into the community to find a good Samaritan and then we give that person $500 cash.
We then challenge them to “Pay It Forward” by giving that money away to someone truly deserving.
This week, we started the morning off going up to several people and asking them if they knew of anyone they could pay it forward to, and, well, many just couldn’t think of anyone.
But, after some time, we finally found the right person.
Maggie LeBas was the perfect person to help pay it forward and she knew what we were there for.
“I have an envelope with $500 in it to give to you for you to pay it forward to someone that you know that could use $500 that may be lost their job or is struggling to buy Christmas gifts. Can you think of somebody?” Bob Giles said to Maggie.
Maggie replied, “I do know Theresa who is a member of Red’s. This would be a wonderful gift for her. She was displaced from Katrina, Rita and so she’s just a wonderful person and this would tremendously help her.”
Maggie immediately thought of a wonderful person in need, Theresa Fassy.
Maggie teaches swimming lessons at Red Lerille’s Health & Racquet Club and met Theresa there. They’ve become so close, Theresa often invites Maggie over to her house.
So Maggie called Theresa to find out where she was so we could surprise her.
“Theresa, it’s Maggie from Red’s. Where would you be right now? I have something I wanna drop off over there. I’m gonna come meet you at the church. I’ll see you there. Thanks so much. Well, it’s a surprise. You’ll find out in a few minutes.”
So we drove to St. Mary Mother of the Church in Lafayette to meet Theresa Fassy.
We found her doing what she does normally in the mornings at St. Mary’s, gardening. But today, she was in for a real treat.
Theresa was in awe.
Sylvia said to Theresa, “We met Maggie in the Albertson’s grocery parking lot and we asked her if she could think of anyone that could use some help financially and Mr. Bob Giles here has an envelope.”
Bob said, “So we call it ‘Pay It Forward’ and we find someone like Maggie who knows of someone that she wants to bless and I’m going to give her this envelope so she can pay it forward to you.”
Theresa in disbelief said, “I’m so excited. This is unbelievable. She opened the envelope and explained. “This is unbelievable. Oh my God. Thank you. This is so generous. I don’t know what to say.”
Bob added, “Just your smile is enough.”
Sylvia asked Theresa, “How do you know Maggie?”
“At Red’s. And I’m from Katrina. I lost everything there. I had eight feet of water in my house. Everybody’s been so nice here,” added Theresa.
A Christmas blessing for both Maggie and Theresa they’ll never forget.