Mom Who Went Viral For Mistakenly Hugging A Stranger Gets $20k From Ellen

This kind mother who got carried away with the magic at the Wawa went viral for her kindness. Now, she got herself featured at the Ellen DeGeneres Show and was surprised with a $20k gift.

The 35-year-old mother from Fort Myers, Florida, definitely did not think her video would be seen by 80 million people on Facebook.

The mother explained that she was excited with holiday spirits and had decided to buy another woman’s ginger ale at the gas station. She saw a man cleaning her windshield and thought it was so nice of him. She gave him a hug, but it quickly became awkward when she realized that wasn’t really her car.

Mary Katherine Backstrom did not expect that she’d went viral. Much less, the $20k from Ellen herself.

Backstorm said that she was getting influenced as she recently read an article on ‘how everybody’s so generous over the holidays and it makes everything so magical.’ She walked into Wawa and decided to treat the woman behind her for her ginger ale.

She walked out and was “still in the mindset that the holidays are so magical.” She saw a man whom she thought to be cleaning her windshield and was like “I love this time of the year” and hugged him. Only to realize that he was just parking there and cleaning his OWN windshield.

Upon realizing that, she quickly went into her own car and told the story. She couldn’t stop laughing before she explained it on the video.

It appears that Backstorm is just a woman filled with kindness – she’s donated her kidney to her uncle, gave money away and even paid bills for her friends on social media. She once helped a waitress get her car fixed.

Ellen loved her video and story. She was invited to her show.

Ellen praised her, “You’ve done so many other things So even though you don’t have a lot of money, whenever you have any extra money, you find a way to pay it forward.”

“That’s amazing,” says the host.

She was then gifted with $20,000 to do with what she wants. The ‘Christmas magic’ that came true.

Upon getting it, she and husband plans to pay their student loans with it and help share even more ‘random act of kindness’ around them. “We feel like it’s this magic pot of money,” says the elated woman. “And we’ve got to do something special with it. We just haven’t figured out what yet.”