Matthew Jackson, a generous stranger paid for a mother's groceries, but when she went to track him down, Jamie-Lynne Knighten discovered he had passed away. A "pay it forward" movement has begun in his memory.
A California man's good deed is inspiring thousands after a woman he had helped tracked him down only to discover that he had died in a car accident, according to ABC News. Matthew Jackson, 28, made Jamie-Lynne Knighten's day on Nov. 10 by covering her and her young son's grocery bill when she realized that she had left her debit card at home, taking a "pay it forward" approach.
Knighten recounted the story on her Facebook account. Jackson politely offered to cover the $200 bill for her and her five-month-old son, Wyatt, at the Trader Joe's in Oceanside, Calif. "I would be glad to take care of your groceries as long as you promise to do it for someone else," Knighten wrote that Jackson told her. Knighten "came to realize how much it would mean to him if I humbly accepted. So I did."
Days after their encounter, Knighten tried to contact Jackson through the gym he mentioned he worked at, but was shocked to discover that he had passed away. Jackson's manager, Angela Lavinder, took the call at the time. "When she said 'I just wanted the manager to know what kind of a beautiful person they get to work with,' my heart broke and the tears just started coming," Lavinder said, according to CBS News.
Lavinder told Knighten that the good Samaritan had been killed in a car accident which had actually occurred as Jackson was performing another one of his good deeds - he was driving a co-worker whose car had broken down - according to CBS. The accident occurred just the day after Jackson's favor for Knighten.
"His boss explained to me how amazing this young man was in his every day life and that what he did for me was just who he was as a person," Knighten wrote on her Facebook page. She has since set up a Facebook page called "MatthewsLegacy" to commemorate Jackson and to carry on his legacy of "paying it forward" by performing good deeds for strangers.
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