While many in the US never p=even cross the country’s borders, one Arizona man was breaking down borders with an extraordinary gesture of goodwill toward a young girl in Mexico who he didn’t even know.
While Randy Heiss was walking his dog in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona, he saw something strange in the shrubs that caught his eye. It was a deflated red balloon with a note attached by a string. It caught his curiosity.
The note was written in Spanish by a little girl named Dayami. It was a letter to Santa with a short Christmas list that included requests for paints and new clothes. Heiss loved the letter because he used to send letters to Santa the same way, so he decided he was going to help make the little girl’s Christmas wishes come true.
“It really touched my heart to find it and I said well how in the heck am I going to be able to figure out how to make contact with this little girl and make her wishes come true,” said Heiss. He used the power of social media and the help of a Mexican radio station to find Dayami’s family in Nogales, Sonora.
Then, Heiss went shopping for Dayami’s gifts and personally brought them to Nogales, where the family lived. Dayami’s family was extremely happy, but of course, maintained with the little girl that the gifts were from Santa Claus.
“We lost our son nine years ago,” said Heiss. “So we don’t have grandchildren in our future and so really getting to share Christmas with kids was something that’s been missing in our lives.” That appears to have changed, as Heiss has stayed in touch with the Mexican family and they are quickly forging a lasting friendship and what might become an annual tradition.