Heartwarming Holiday Stories From Across the U.S.

The Christmas spirit was alive and well this year from coast to coast, with a stranger paying off the layaway accounts of struggling families and police and firefighters stepping in with replacement gifts after a fire and burglary. Here are some of the holiday season's most heartwarming stories. 

A 64-year-old homeless man who had been living under a bridge in Hawaii reunited with his family in Texas after being separated from them for 20 years.

Police in Manchester, Connecticut delivered toys to needy children using an armored Bearcat vehicle as a sleigh.

In New Hampshire it was "elves" who were doing the delivering. Members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) dressed up as Santa's helpers to deliver pet kittens to families.

After a fire destroyed a Virginia family's home, including all the Christmas presents inside, firefighters who responded to the fire brought replacement gifts to the family.

A father was brought to tears in North Miami Beach when police officers replaced hundreds of dollars' worth of gifts for his children after his family's home was burglarized.

Southern Pennsylvania Transit officers jumped into action to help a mother deliver the ultimate Christmas gift onboard a subway car — a baby boy.

A Marine helped a Southern California woman dig her home out from under a 6-foot-tall pile of mud and rocks. The homeowner had been sending the Marine care packages through the Adopt A Soldier program, so the latter wanted to return the favor. 

Firefighters and police officers in West Covina, California, played Santa Claus to restore a family's holiday spirit by replacing gifts that were inside their car when it was stolen on Christmas Eve.

A 12-year-old Texas boy who has been suffering from cancer since the age of three only wanted cards for Christmas. He's gotten that ten times over. So far he has received more than 7,000 cards from all over the world. 

An anonymous "layaway angel" paid the layaway accounts of about 150 people at a Toys "R" Us in Bellingham, Massachusetts, covering about $20,000 in holiday merchandise.

A YouTube star with more than 711,000 subscribers gave a homeless man $100 to see what he would do with the money. To his surprise, the man came out of a liquor store with food for his fellow homeless.

Santa brought good news to a child born prematurely on Christmas last year and who has been in the hospital ever since. After a year in the hospital, the one-year-old boy finally gets to go home. 

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