“She told him, ‘No, I’m paying for it,’” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.

“She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she said she wasn’t going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people happy with it,” Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to “remember Ben,” an apparent reference to her husband.

Most of the donors have done their giving secretly.

Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son. “I was speechless,” Bremser said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.” Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana.

The benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away items for young children.

They often pay a portion of the balance, usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the store’s system. The phenomenon seems to have begun in Michigan before spreading, Kmart executives said.

“It is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this time of the year,” said Salima Yala, Kmart’s division vice president for layaway.

Kmart representatives say they did nothing to instigate the secret Santas or spread word of the generosity. But it’s happening as the company struggles to compete with chains such as Wal-Mart and Target. Kmart may be the focus of layaway generosity, Yala said, because it is one of the few large discount stores that has offered layaway year-round for about four decades.

The sad memories of layaways lost prompted at least one good Samaritan to pay off the accounts of five people at an Omaha Kmart, said Karl Graff, the store’s assistant manager. “She told me that when she was younger, her mom used to set up things on layaway at Kmart, but they rarely were able to pay them off because they just didn’t have the money for it,” Graff said.

Graff’s store alone has seen about a dozen layaway accounts paid off in the last 10 days, with the donors paying $50 to $250 on each account. “To be honest, in retail, it’s easy to get cynical about the holidays, because you’re kind of grinding it out when everybody else is having family time,” Graff said. “It’s really encouraging to see this side of Christmas again.”

A Kmart in Plainfield Township, Mich., called Roberta Carter last week to let her know a man had paid all but 40 cents of her $60 layaway. Carter, a mother of eight from Grand Rapids, Mich., said she cried upon hearing the news. She and her family have been struggling as she seeks a full-time job.

“My kids will have clothes for Christmas,” she said.

Leah Gosch had tied her wedding ring to her shoe while she was working out at the LA Fitness in Blaine, Minnesota over the weekend because it had just been polished. After leaving, she realized her shoelaces were untied and her most-prized possession was gone.

“It’s my husband’s mom’s dad’s ring, so the diamond is important,” Leah Gosch explained.

Her ring finger would still be lacking sparkle if it wasn’t for Rian Vierzba.

After finding the ring in gym’s parking lot, he saw a sign at the gym offering a reward for the return of the item. Vierzba then returned the ring to its rightful owner without receiving anything in return.

Gosch said, “Absolutely elated — I can’t describe what it felt like to get it back,”

She and her husband, Mattias, had almost given up hope as nearly a week passed without any sign of the ring — until they were finally contacted by Vierzba.

“I just felt like it was the right thing to do — to find who owned it rather than just give it to a pawnshop,” Vierzba said.

Vierzba, who himself has been married for three and a half years, said that he only did what he would wish someone else to do if they found his wedding ring.

With luck on her side and wedding ring back in her hands, Gosch says she plans to think twice about tying knots with it from now on.