Rachel Fieldhouse
Caring

Grocery do-gooder finally unmasked

A mystery supermarket do-gooder has been unmasked and revealed to be a retired businessman who says he never wants to grow up.

Dean Graham, the son of late rich-lister Neil Graham, came forward and identified himself as the one paying for people’s groceries or restaurant bills, which he says he does on a weekly basis around New Zealand, per the NZ Herald.

“It’s just giving people something to put a smile on their face really,” he said.

“These days it’s a lot of doom and gloom, and things are tough for a lot of people.”

Last month, the 56-year-old left more than $200 cash with a checkout operator at a Lincoln New World store to pay for the groceries of the family behind him in line.

Jen Stewart, the mum who received his act of kindness, told Star News she and her young family had just been through a difficult period recovering from Covid and that Graham’s gift left her “speechless”.

“This person didn’t know how grateful I was on that very week that he would pay for my shopping,” she said.

After using $100 to pay for her groceries, she gave the remainder to another grateful single mum to use for her bill.

Graham said he first started his random acts of kindness two years ago, after seeing an elderly couple struggle to pay for their lunch at a local sandwich shop.

When he went back to the store two months later, one of the staff memebrs told him the couple had begun doing the same for others.

“I thought to myself, ‘If I can do that and change the way people think, I think it’s a good thing’,” he said.

“I care, and I can help, I do want to change people’s lives.

“I just think life is so short, I just want to put it out there to believe we all are for other human beings.”

Graham has given even more generous gifts to his friends, including a $100,000 truck for a friend’s birthday and eight of his own motorbikes, but he isn’t worried about his generosity being taken advantage of.

“Friends don’t hang around me for that, because they knew me from when I had nothing,” Graham said.

He said he started at the bottom of Mainfreight, the trucking company his father co-founded, pinching pennies with flatmates while working as a storeman.

His life has been anything but uneventful either, having been married twice, been a solo father of five for eight years, and now living with his partner and in the process of building his very own man cave.

Image: Dean Graham (Facebook)

Tags:
Caring, Acts of Kindness, New Zealand, Money