Michigan auto repair shop owner delivers lost packages for Christmas

Very little CHUTE, Wisc. — Some Wisconsin homes had been visited by a selfless gift-giver a small early this Christmas year. 

But it wasn’t a jolly old gentleman with a prolonged white beard in a crimson accommodate from the North Pole who came down their chimneys. It was a Minimal Chute automobile repair store owner with a truck full of shed offers at their front door.

Dan Theimer has owned Gracy’s Vehicle Entire body store in Very little Chute for 12 many years. On Dec. 13, a cargo van subcontracted by FedEx was towed to his shop just after it was concerned in an accident that smashed up the van’s front. The van was full of 80 packages en route to be shipped throughout the Fox Valley. 

The place is Santa now? Comply with his Christmas Eve journey with these Google and NORAD trackers

By the time Wednesday rolled about, no 1 from the van organization or FedEx experienced appear to get the deals. Theimer said the subcontractor instructed him: “That’s not our difficulty.”

Theimer, who grew up in the Fox Valley, acknowledged some of the names on the deals, so he arrived at out to the entrepreneurs and advised them their deals were being at his store. 

“The to start with couple of persons who picked up their stuff were so delighted, so I thought, ‘Maybe I improved see what I can do to disperse the relaxation of this load,'” Theimer said. 

Some of the deals had mobile phone numbers on the shipping and delivery label, so Theimer known as and advised the recipients they could appear decide up their products at his shop, he reported. The other 50 percent of the offers didn’t have cellular phone numbers, so Theimer loaded them up in his truck and delivered them all to their rightful homeowners. 

“It was completely the suitable issue to do,” he stated. “I started to assume, ‘It’s having awfully near to Christmas. They are gonna want this things.’ Just looking at the seem on some of these people’s faces when I introduced their things. It almost would seem like all people would tell me what was in their bundle. I failed to even ask them.”

He shipped boxes for a business holiday break occasion, a sewing machine a mother was setting up to give to her daughter for Christmas and even someone’s medicine. Earning the deliveries took about three several hours, he reported. 

People were quite amazed when he showed up at their homes with missing deals. Some had invested time on the phone with FedEx striving to monitor down their buys. 

“Two individual folks experienced a tear in their eye and they said, ‘You just entirely restored our faith in humanity,'” Theimer said.  

“It was a modest matter to do for me, but it appeared like a huge matter to them.”

It was not until finally Saturday — a week right before Christmas — that someone from FedEx showed up to Gracy’s unannounced to retrieve the deals. 

“I mentioned, ‘They’re previously long gone,'” Theimer explained.  

Follow Natalie Brophy on Twitter: @brophy_natalie.