Rapper Ludacris Pays Atlanta Woman’s $375 Grocery Bill

ATLANTA, GA — Rapper and actor Ludacris may say he’s just “a regular guy,” but Atlanta freelance writer Therra Jaramillo says he’s “an angel” and “awesome run amok,” not for what he does on stage or on screen, but in everyday life — like when he’s standing in the checkout line at a grocery store.

Jaramillo was having a tough time stretching her cash after a month of bad luck. She had to replace her water heater, a financial hit of almost $4,000, and one of her clients hadn’t paid the $2,000 she was owed.

Jaramillo, whose husband died of brain cancer, has a lot to handle. She cares for her disabled brother, as well as a menagerie of rescued animals — four dogs, a couple of cats and a blind chicken named Dixie Licklighter. She was making rice for her and the dogs and rationing her gas.

She cried every day. She felt like a loser. She thought she might break into pieces.

A friend, one Jaramillo calls “Miracle Mary,” sent her a gift card to the Whole Foods store in her Atlanta neighborhood so she could stock the cupboards of her kitchen, which were almost bare.

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She was picking up some groceries when the most amazing thing happened — “one that stunned me into the stratosphere,” Jaramillo wrote on her Facebook page. At the checkout line, she started putting her items on the conveyor belt and they got mixed in with items the customer ahead of her was buying.

She was apologizing to the clerk when the guy in front of her said, “I might as well get it,” Jaramillo wrote.

“He wanted to buy food for my pets. I even clumsily tried to stop the cashier at a certain amount, because the gift card was for $250 and I had gone way over, which at Whole Foods is far too easy to do,” she wrote. “I was out of a lot of things at home and I hadn’t added things in my head correctly. My head hasn’t worked all month due to stress. Nothing has worked all month.

“He stopped me. ‘I said I got this,’ he said.

“All of this, he told me. All of my groceries.”

Her bill totaled $375.

Who was this angel, Jaramillo wondered.

“Just a guy,” he said, introducing himself as Chris.

No, she thought, this was no ordinary guy.

After Chris left, the cashier said to Jaramillo, “You know that’s Ludacris, right?”

“He was just doing something kind for a disheveled, harried stranger,” Jaramillo wrote. “Showing the love in his soul. Shining a light in the world. But there's something else.

“What Ludacris had no way of knowing is that I can't really afford to shop at Whole Foods. Not much, anyway. I was there because Miracle Mary gave me a gift card and knew I'd been shouldering a very rough time as of late.

“What Ludacris had no way of knowing is that my husband died of brain cancer and climbing out of that hole, emotionally, physically and financially, has devastated me for most of four years. I won't lie. I've struggled in ways I didn't know a human could struggle and still survive.”

Read the full post here.

(Photo by Mat Szwajkos/Getty Images)