12/20/2001 - Updated 12:33 AM ET Secret Santa makes NYC's season bright

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY An anonymous 'Secret Santa' from Kansas City, Mo., walks around downtown Manhattan to hand out $100 bills to anyone he thinks is needy. NEW YORK — There were lots of miracles on 34th Street this week, and one of them happened to James Frazier.

The Macy's security guard, a new father at 19, was standing at his post at the famous intersection of Seventh Avenue and 34th Street when a gentleman with white hair and a gray beard handed Frazier a crisp $100 bill.

Frazier looked dumbfounded at the money. "Is he Santa Claus?" he asked as the man disappeared into the crowd. "I believe in Santa Claus. I grew out of it when I was 10, but now I believe in Santa Claus."

The mystery man who doled out $100 bills all around Manhattan on Tuesday and Wednesday and will do it again Thursday is a wealthy businessman from the Kansas City area who has been nicknamed Secret Santa in his hometown, where he has been doing this for 22 years. This year, he came to New York, where he thought his largess would offer some comfort to a wounded city.

Secret Santa gave dozens of New Yorkers $100 each, others received several hundred dollars, and a few got $1,000 or more. At the end of three days, he'll have given away $25,000 of his own money. And then he's headed back to Kansas City, where he'll give away another $25,000 before Christmas.

His goal in both cities: to find and help "people who have that lost look in their eyes. There are certain people who are really in bad trouble, and they need a lift," he says.

Once penniless and homeless himself, he knows that a little bit goes a long way with many people. "You'd have thought I just gave them a million dollars."

Many wealthy people across the country get into the Christmas spirit with generous, anonymous giving. They write checks to the Salvation Army, Catholic Relief Services or their favorite charities. But what makes Secret Santa unique is his direct approach, personally going into the streets to meet the people he helps.

During his whirlwind New York visit, he gave $100 bills to homeless people on the street, to people in wheelchairs, and to young mothers with babies outside a social service agency.

One woman, an epileptic, said she desperately needed the money because she was down to her last $100 and is going on disability. Another homeless man in a wheelchair said he had never received this much money ($200) from one person before, and he planned to share his windfall with his family.

As Santa went about his work, he didn't wear a Santa costume but sported a red flannel shirt and a photographer's vest with lots of pockets for his cash. He alternated between a New York Police Department cap and Santa hat. For safety reasons, he was sometimes accompanied by two New York police officers.

Santa has always been anonymous and wants to keep it that way. Only his wife, adult children and a few close friends know who he really is.

He understands why people sometimes don't go to the government, churches or charities for assistance. "It's very embarrassing for any person to have to ask for help. You feel like a failure, a loser. And when you lose your self-esteem, that's when you start losing hope," he says.

Santa's meager boyhood

Santa speaks from experience. As he tells it, his own life story was colored by poverty. He was raised in a small town in Mississippi by his grandparents, who struggled to keep him fed and clothed. "When the soles of my shoes wore out, my grandmother put cardboard in the bottom of them," he says.

In late winter of 1971, Santa, then a young man, was working in the little town of Houston, Miss., as a door-to-door salesman. His company went out of business, and within a few days, Santa had no money for food, gas or the motel room he was renting.

He also had no family to turn to for help. So he went to a local church, where he was told that the person in charge was gone for the day and to check back tomorrow. "I was ashamed of being homeless. I was terribly embarrassed, and I didn't want anybody to know. I didn't go back."

For eight days, he slept in his car, he says. He didn't have a nickel to his name and hadn't eaten for almost two days when he went to the Dixie Diner and ordered a big breakfast. He sipped his coffee until the crowd thinned out, then acted as if he had lost his wallet.

"I put on what I thought was an Academy Award performance. I fumbled around for my wallet. I got up and looked around the front door for it, and I looked around the stool I had been sitting on. I had this bewildered look on my face," Santa says.

Then the owner of the diner, who also was the waiter and cook, came over near the stool where Santa had been sitting and picked up a $20 bill off the floor. "Son, you must have dropped this," the diner owner said.

"It was like a fortune to me," Santa says. "I said to myself, 'Thank you, Lord.' And my next thought was that 'I'd better go ahead and get out of here before the person who really dropped it comes back in.' "

He paid for the breakfast, left a tip, pushed his car to a gas station and headed west. On the way out of town, it dawned on him "that maybe nobody had dropped the money at all — maybe that fella just knew I was in trouble, and he helped me in a way that didn't embarrass me. I'd been praying for a few days before that, and right then I just made a little promise. I said, 'Lord, if ever you put me in a position to help other people, I will do it.' "

Within a year, he had packed all of his belongings into one suitcase and headed to Kansas City on a bus. He struggled for years to make a living. He got married and had children.

"I borrowed money to start a business and sweated blood to pay it back," but it failed, he says. A second business, however, was successful.

It was 1979 when he made good on his promise to help those less fortunate. On a cold, snowy day around Christmas in Independence, Mo., he stopped at a drive-in and ordered a hamburger and soft drink. He gave the carhop a $50 bill and said, "Keep the change."

"You're kidding," she said.

"No, ma'am, Merry Christmas," he said.

She started sobbing and said, "Sir, you have no idea what this means to me."

It felt so wonderful that Santa went directly to the bank, got some more cash and started giving it away, he says.

By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY 'Secret Santa,' a mystery man from the Midwest, gives $100 to Danny Aqbalzo, a store clerk on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan. For a few years, he didn't tell a soul what he was doing, not even his wife and children. Now, his whole family is in on it, and he and his wife budget how much they can afford to give away. One year alone, he handed out $85,000. Over the past 22 years, he figures, he has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars. He says there are no tax breaks for the way he distributes his money.

'He just hands them the cash'

Beverly Sheldon, executive director of the Community Services League in eastern Jackson County, Mo., a private social services agency, has helped Santa find needy people over the years, and she wishes everyone had his spirit of giving.

"He's very open-minded. He doesn't expect every family to look like the Cratchits, with perfect little children who have wonderful manners and love each other," she says. "He doesn't say, 'Before I give you the cash, I want to know these things.' He just hands them the cash."

Stacey Burke, a mother of four in Independence, met Secret Santa in 1998 when she had hit bottom. She wasn't able to work because she had a brain aneurysm; her husband was paralyzed in 1993 after he was beaten up. He lives in a nursing home.

Burke and her children lived in a tent for a few weeks that year, but she still managed to send her kids to school. The Community Services League helped Burke rent a house, and the agency told Santa about her. He met her and gave her $4,000 and a Mother of the Year award.

"I was overwhelmed," she says. "I bought my kids some Christmas presents and some new clothes. I paid some bills. I got some furniture I needed. I bought myself a vacuum cleaner. I fixed up my van with it. I gave my niece who was having a hard time $100. And I gave another family member and friend some money. I wanted to return the favor to someone else. I made every penny count."

Santa says he has no rigid guidelines for who receives the money. He sometimes identifies a few people from social services agencies, police officers and firefighters, but much of the money he gives away to people he sees on the street, in diners, laundromats, pawnshops, fast-food chains and other places.

"It's easy to find people who are in need, because a laundromat or pawnshop is the last place they want to be on Christmas Eve," he says. It doesn't have to be a homeless person, he says. "Sometimes it's people who have a job, but they are really struggling."

Although he distributes money all year round, Christmas is his favorite time of year. Of the hundreds of people he has helped, a couple stand out in his mind:

He once walked into a house in Kansas City where a grandmother was struggling to raise 10 grandchildren. She had just called the kids downstairs to tell them there wasn't going to be a Christmas, when he arrived and gave them $3,000. In 1999, he returned to Houston, Miss., and found the owner of the Dixie Diner who had given him $20. Santa said at the time that $20 seemed like $10,000 to him, so he gave the then-elderly gentleman whose wife was ailing $10,000. $5,000 for Saint Paul's Chapel

As Santa moved about the Big Apple on Tuesday and Wednesday, some people were skeptical when they received the $100 bills. Others were in a state of disbelief. One woman went up to a police officer and tried to give the money back.

"Is this real?" asked Rose Ann Marina, 33, a mother who was strolling down 34th Street with her 9-month-old son, Christopher. "It's incredible. No one has ever given me money before. I never even find money." She said she was going to use the money to buy her son a gift for Christmas.

Santa dropped off $5,000 at Saint Paul's Chapel, which is feeding workers who are sifting through the debris at the World Trade Center site. It costs $3,500 a day for the 2,000 meals served at the church, says the Rev. Lyndon Harris. "What a kind-hearted soul, what a generous soul," Harris says. "It's Christmas at Ground Zero."

Pamela Kramer, a 38-year-old homeless woman, literally jumped up and down with joy. She plans to use her $100 to start looking for an apartment.

Billy Williams, 65, who is in a wheelchair, said his $200 was enough to carry him through the Christmas holidays.

'An angel sent from God'

Sabra Freeman, 41, called Santa "an angel sent from God." And her friend, Tempia Emanuel, 53, agreed, adding, "I've never had anyone give me anything, and I've been working since I was 8-years-old."

After James Frazier, the young security guard from Macy's, received $100 from Santa, he got two Christmas cookies and took them to Santa, who was still handing out money on 34th Street.

Santa isn't surprised by the incredible reactions he gets.

"It's something that never happened to them before," he says. "It restores some faith in humanity."

He believes in God and considers himself a very spiritual person. He doesn't want any fame for this. "Accolades embarrass me," he says. But he hopes other people realize they can do something like this, too.

"They don't have to give away $100 bills," he says. "They can just say thanks or leave a little extra tip or show their appreciation in a way that they don't ask for anything in return. There is a way to do this so a person doesn't feel embarrassed or that they are a charity case.

"I've lived the story, so I know it's definitely more blessed to give than receive, because it comes back to you many, many times over," he says.

Santa can be reached at secretsanta1971@aol.com.

-- Anonymous, December 20, 2001

Answers

As both stories relate, the man has done this for many years. He goes to great lengths to protect his identity because he truly wishes his gifts to be anonymous. That he does it, and in the amounts he does (without consideration of receiving a tax break, too!) says to me there are still some "good guys" to be found. Heck, we're learning the hard way this year most of our heroes are unsung; the truly great ones usually are.

-- Anonymous, December 20, 2001

Restores some faith in our species!

-- Anonymous, December 20, 2001