Editor’s Note: The man featured in this story has now been identified as Detric McGowan, who was arrested on Tuesday following a long-term U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency investigation. Read the full story here.
A man in South Carolina has either a massive sweet tooth or just a warm heart after buying US$540 in Girl Scouts cookies so the youngsters could pack up and “get out of this cold.”
A Girl Scout troop was peddling cookies outside of a Greenville grocery store on Friday as temperatures were hovering around 1 C when a man approached the girls and purchased seven boxes of cookies.
“This man purchased seven packs of cookies. Gave the girls $40, told them to keep the change,” Kayla Dillard, Girl Scouts’ troop “cookie manager” said on social media.
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The man returned a short time later, and paid an extra $500 to clear out the troop’s inventory.
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“Then he came back to the table and said, ‘Pack up all of your cookies. I’m taking them all so y’all can get out of this cold,’” Dillard said, noting the man dropped $540 on the addictive sweets. “What an amazing soul!”
Speaking with CBS News, Dillard said the two young girls sold 221 boxes of cookies on Friday and the quantity the man had purchased would have taken the troop another day or so to sell.
“When he told us to pack up all the cookies because he was going to buy them we were shocked,” she said. “We stood there in shock for a little while.”
Dillard said the Good Samaritan didn’t provide his name or say much about himself, other than he owns several businesses and he planned to take the cookies there.
“That man was just a very kind, sincere and humble man who loves children,” Dillard told CBS.