Dad Dumps 80,000 Pennies on Lawn As Last Child Support Payment, Daughter Responds With Kindness

When an estranged father dumped 80,000 pennies in the front lawn of a Virginia house as the last child support payment, his teen daughter and former wife decided to turn the hurtful incident into a positive experience by donating the money to a domestic abuse center, prompting others to follow.

Avery Sanford, a Deep Run High School graduate from Richmond, was in the middle of a class in May, when her father showed up in front of her house with a rented trailer and began to dump $800 worth of pennies.

Epoch Times Photo
(Courtesy of Raven Sickal)

Initially unaware of who the person was and what was happening, Avery’s mother, Raven Sickal, came out of the house and questioned the act. It was only when the man shouted, “It’s your final child support payment,” that Avery’s mother finally realized who the person was, WTVR-TV reported.

“It’s not just my mom he’s trying to embarrass, it’s also me and my sister and it’s upsetting that he didn’t consider that before he did that,” Avery said, referring to the incident.

However, instead of responding with anger, the mother-daughter duo decided to gift the pennies they collected to Safe Harbor, a nonprofit with a mission to support sexual, domestic violence, and human trafficking survivors.

Epoch Times Photo
(Courtesy of Raven Sickal)
Epoch Times Photo
(Courtesy of Raven Sickal)

“It was really hard for me to see that,” Cathy Easter, executive director of Safe Harbor, told Inside Edition. “Rather than being defeated by such a spiteful act, [they] worked together and decided they would pay it forward.”

Cathy added that her staff were very “grateful” when the mother-daughter duo reached out to them. As more people caught wind of their story, it unleashed a spirit of generosity, and others were inspired to donate to the charity.

Mary Maupai, Safe Harbor’s development director, revealed that donations poured in from all over. “Our online donation page just blew up. And we’ve gotten over $47,000 worth of donations from locally, nationally, internationally—as far as England and beyond,” Maupai said, according to ABC7 Chicago. “This will be one for the books for sure.”

Raven and Avery were both overcome with emotion on learning their positive response had such a huge impact.

“This reach has been amazing and the thoughtfulness and kind gestures have been beyond anything we expected. We just wanted to turn this around and that’s exactly what we did,” Raven’s statement read.

Raven said she reported the incident to Henrico Police.

Avery, who is all set to be a freshman at Virginia Tech, hasn’t spoken to her father in years and said she had no interest in keeping in touch with someone who disrespects her mother.

WTRV-TV also reached out to Avery’s father, who admitted that his action was a result of an 18-year-long frustration that was within him. However, the last thing he wanted to do, he said, was to put a further wedge between him and his daughter.

Watch the video:

(Courtesy of Raven Sickal)

Share your stories with us at [email protected], and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter

Source

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes