A Minnesota store employee worked in her socks after she 'automatically' took off her retro Air Jordans and gave them to a man who wore boxes on his feet
- A store worker in Minnesota gave a man her shoes after noticing he didn't have any.
- The woman's manager told a local news station he wished he had "a dozen" of her on staff.
A store worker in Minnesota gave her retro Jordans to a man after she noticed that he was wearing boxes on his feet, WCCO, a CBS affiliate, reported on Friday.
Ta Leia Thomas, who goes by "Ace" works in a liquor store in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Brooklyn Center Liquor manager, Tom Agnes, told WCCO he saw Ace working in her socks when he came back from his lunch break on Tuesday.
Security camera footage showed a man digging through a garbage can outside the store looking for boxes that he could affix to his feet in place of shoes, according to WCCO. Thomas saw the man and stopped him, offering him her own shows, her favorite pair of retro Air Jordans.
Thomas told WCCO she "automatically took my shoes off" when she saw the man. "He said nobody would ever give me shoes like that and I said, 'well I'm not everybody,'" Thomas told WCCO.
Thomas said she was "always taught to help others" because "you never know what their problem is, or what they are going through."
Agnes bought Thomas a new pair of shoes to finish the work day and shared Thomas's act of kindness in a Facebook post that has since received nearly a thousand comments.
"This was not just a regular old pair of shoes. Ace, being a Minnesota Vikings fan, had on her favorite pair of purple Nike Air Jordans which she gave to the man with zero hesitation," Agnes wrote in the post. "This is a true example of empathy, compassion, and holiday cheer."
Agnes told WCCO that he raised $450 to buy Thomas a new pair of shoes as a replacement but later found out that Thomas is taking care of her mother, who is in need of a new bed. Agnes said he gave Thomas the cash instead so that she could use it to buy a bed.
"I wish I could have a dozen Aces on staff," Agnes told WCCO.