The season of giving is here, and there is no truer embodiment of the phrase than what a local business owner recently did for unsuspecting shoppers of Wal-Mart. Greg Parady, the owner of Parady Financial Group, recently made a trip to Wal-Mart to collect bicycles for a Toys-for-Tots event. When he overheard a woman in the layaway department paying off one of her items, he made a decision to play Santa for dozens of families this year and cover over $20,000 in layaway expenses for multiple families on the Wal-Mart list.
“I haven’t felt like that about a holiday in a long time,” said Debra Davis, the employee that helped Mr. Parady go through the records and, one-by-one, pay off balances. “[His act] resonated through the whole store and is still resonating with employees,” said Davis of Mr. Parady’s generosity.
“I’ve known him for years and he just does things because he feels like doing them,” said Cindy Nazzaro, the managing partner at Parady Financial. “It brought us all to tears…and made me realize we work in an awesome community. This is Greg’s way of giving back to the community, paying them back for how gracious they’ve been to us,” said Nazzaro.
