14 DAY TRIAL // Valarie Watts, the mother of a stillborn baby, received an unexpected gift from a total stranger after she sold some of her son's things at a garage sale outside her Cokato, Minnesota, home.
A man named Gerald Kumpula, who owns a workshop in Cokato, bought the crib intended for Valarie's stillborn son and transformed it into a beautiful memorial chair. After that, he returned the piece to the grieving mother as a gift to help her deal with the baby's passing.
The young woman was still mourning the loss of her son Noah when she held the event, and initially was reluctant to part with the things intended for her baby. She eventually did it, but she never thought she would ever see the crib again.
“His wife was looking through … some of the baby clothes and asked how old my son was since I don't use the crib anymore,” Valarie said, according to NY Daily News. “And I told her that he had passed in July.”
Kumpula only found out about the crib's sad story on his way home with his wife. When he learned how significant the crib was to the woman, the craftsman decided to turn it into a memorial bench and hand it back.
A week later, the kind man brought the crib back to Valarie's house. The grieving mother immediately burst into tears when she saw it transformed into something so beautiful.
“It's amazing, and there's good people out there. There's proof,” she said.