On a chilly night in South Carolina, a man spent $540 dollars on Girl Scout cookies so the girls could get out of the cold. Girl Scouts Emerson and Maya worked a cookie booth outside a grocery store in Mauldin, South Carolina, with members of the 1574 Troop. Hours passed and temperatures began to fall, but there were still many boxes to be sold. The night took an uplifting turn when a man walked up to the stand and bought seven cookie boxes. He paid $40 for his order and told the girls to keep the change.
But then the man came back and said something that left everyone shocked.
“Pack up all of your cookies,” the man added. “I’m taking them all so y’all can get out of this cold.”
Kayla Dillard, the cookie manager who was with the girls that cold night, said the man spent $540 dollars buying every box they had.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuWYqIJDY4B/?utm_source=ig_embed
“The girls were almost speechless,” Dillard told local news. “Then they got busy trying to calculate his total.”
Dillard said she does not know who the man is, but she was able to get a photo of him standing beside a grateful Emerson and Maya.
“What an amazing soul,” Dillard told CNN. “It was about 34 degrees outside that night and we were there for about two hours already before he came.”
Dillard posted the photo on Facebook where it quickly started circulating. At that time, the man’s identity remained a mystery.
“He mentioned he owned several businesses,” Dillard stated. “We assume he was going to give the cookies away.”
Dillard said the man’s generous actions altered the entire trajectory of the troop’s cookie sale plan.
“We actually had to cancel some of our booth sales this weekend because we didn’t have cookies to sell at the booth because he purchased them all,” Dillard told CBS News.
The troop had set a goal of selling 3,200 boxes, but thanks to the mystery man, they have sold closer to 5,000.
The man whose picture went viral for buying $540 worth of Girl Scout cookies so the young girls selling them wouldn’t have to stand in the cold has been arrested on federal drug charges.
Detric “Fat” McGowan, 46, was arrested in South Carolina on Tuesday by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on charges related to selling and distribution of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl, according to court documents. The arrest was first reported by local station WSPA.
McGowan was part of what U.S. Attorney Sherri Lydon called “a wide-ranging conspiracy” with several others to smuggle more than $1 million cash from South Carolina outside the U.S. to pay for drugs. McGowan faces a maximum of life imprisonment if convicted.
U.S.
Man Who Bought $540 Worth Of Girl Scout Cookies Arrested In Drug Bust
HuffPost Nina Golgowski,HuffPost 5 hours ago
A man whose picture went viral for buying $540 worth of Girl Scout cookies so the young girls selling them wouldn’t have to stand in the cold has been arrested on federal drug charges.
Detric “Fat” McGowan, 46, was arrested in South Carolina on Tuesday by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on charges related to selling and distribution of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl, according to court documents. The arrest was first reported by local station WSPA.
McGowan was part of what U.S. Attorney Sherri Lydon called “a wide-ranging conspiracy” with several others to smuggle more than $1 million cash from South Carolina outside the U.S. to pay for drugs. McGowan faces a maximum of life imprisonment if convicted.
Detric McGowan, 46, who went viral after purchasing $540 worth of Girl Scout cookies, has been arrested by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. (Spartanburg Sheriff’s Office)
McGowan’s arrest came days after he made nationwide news for his generous and then-anonymous cookie purchase outside a store near Greenville, South Carolina.
On Friday, one of the girls’ mothers, Kayla Dillard, posted a photo on Facebook showing McGowan, who she didn’t identify by name, smiling with two of the girls. Dillard wrote that the man bought the cookies after telling the girls: ”‘Pack up all of your cookies. I’m taking them all so y’all can get out of this cold.’”
The warrant for McGowan’s arrest was issued three days before the Facebook post.
The arrest, said DEA spokesman Chuvalo Truesdell, “has nothing to do” with the viral photo. “It’s totally unrelated. Just bad luck on his behalf,” Truesdell told HuffPost.
McGowan’s defense attorney, Janis Hall, declined to comment on the case when reached by HuffPost.
“In my opinion, he is a very good-hearted person who did a very good deed,” Hall said by phone on Wednesday, referring to the cookie purchase.
The Girl Scouts will cooperate with authorities and had no reason to believe that McGowan was “anything other than one of our valuable customers,” Karen Kelly, vice president of recruitment and marketing for Girl Scouts of South Carolina-Mountains to Midlands, told The Associated Press.
McGowan remained jailed in Spartanburg County on Wednesday, records show.
Court documents show that McGowan has a previous record involving drug charges in Georgia and South Carolina in 2009 and 1997.
