Pinderfields maternity worker left in shock after 'lovely' stranger pays for food shop

Isobelle Ellen, who is a maternity support worker at Pinderfields Hospital, was shopping at Aldi in Featherstone on Friday when she received the gift.

She said: “I went for a little shop and the queue was absolutely huge, I spoke to a woman who said she’d been there an hour.

“I had my [NHS ID] card on me and I felt like I was being a right cow but I got to the front and lifted my card up and said do you mind if I stand here and they were all absolutely lovely.

“This guy must have overheard me. I was at the flower section and he just came over and said ‘are you the NHS worker?’

“I’m a really nervous person so I just jumped out of my skin.

“He handed me the £50 and said ‘This is for your shopping’.

“I said I couldn’t take it but he threw it in the trolley and started sprinting off.

“I was absolutely hysterical. I phoned my dad after and he thought something was wrong.

“It’s a lot of money £50, maybe not to some people but to us it is.

“I’ve never in my life had anything like that, it was crazy. I wanted to find him because I was that in shock I was worried I never properly thanked him.”

Thanks to the anonymous donation, Isobelle, had to fork out less than £7 to pay for her food shop.

Isobelle, 24, posted on Facebook about the incident, describing her “shock and awe” at the gift and hoping she would be able to identify the stranger.

She had hoped that a few friends would share the post, but it has since been shared more than 16,000 times, and seen by 53,000 people.

Isobelle said she and her colleagues had been constantly surprised by the public support during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re all a big family,” she said. “We all pull together, whether it’s personal or like what’s going on now with the pandemic.

“That’s what makes us do it, we pull together and support each other.

“[Public support] has been lovely. The clap every Thursday is unreal.

“It has been lovely and when they do that we feel like we’ve got a push to go back and do it all again.It made me feel appreciated.”