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Grocery Store Gives Ailing Woman Early Christmas Gift

Meijer Aids Woman Around The Holidays

(CBS) -- A 68-year-old Chicago woman says her neighborhood grocery store helped her out in a big way this past weekend by surprising her—and paying for everything in her shopping cart—and now she says she will be able to help her own family.

This has been a tough year for Emily Leszczynski, WBBM Newsradio's Steve Miller reports. She was in the hospital with the flu, and then had to have stents put in her heart. She developed blood clots and is on oxygen.

On Saturday, she was grocery shopping with her adult son. At checkout, the store paid for everything in her cart: about $350 worth.

"I know this sounds like a commercial for Meijer. But we've been going there for five years, even before I got sick," Leszcynski says.

Leszczynski says now she can afford to help her niece, who wants to go back to school.

"A lot of times when you're despondent, you feel like there's nothing out there, and along comes somebody who does something so nice to you," she says.

A Meijer spokesman says the company did the same thing for one random family at each of the chain's 213 stores.

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