Mikah Frye, a 9-year-old boy, was walking down the streets with his grandmother discussing Christmas gifts when he saw some homeless people struggling to stay warm in the cold night. Then he was thinking about a way to help the homeless to spend a warm Christmas.
That thought stayed in Mikah Frye's mind and when he reached home, Mikah informed his parents not to buy the Microsoft XBox gaming device he had asked for earlier. Mikah realized that by not buying the $300 device, he could instead donate over 30 blankets to the homeless. He knew how much it meant to be warm in the cold holiday season.
Three years ago, Mikah and his parents were the ones living in a homeless shelter. Having suffered a financial crisis, they too had lost their house, not knowing where their next meal would come from and sharing a blanket every night. Mikah was six years old then but he remembered what it was like to have to give back that precious blanket every morning.
Reaching out to the emergency shelter programme that looked after them 3 years ago, the family donated 60 blankets in the end, each with a personalized message of hope in Mikah's handwriting stating: "They gave me a blanket, but I had to leave it. That's why I want you to have your own blanket. Today, I live in my own house, and someday you will too. Your friend, Mikah."
The homeless people at the shelter may not have been able to give Mikah a Christmas gift in return but his gesture was noted by the billion dollar company Microsoft who made sure that Mikah was fooled into visiting their store so that Santa Claus could personally deliver an XBox from the company to him as a reward for making the top of "Santa's list of nice boys" that year.
