4-year-old Noah Ruiz of Crown Heights went viral last week when he accidentally ordered thousands of dollars' worth of popsicles on Amazon. But thanks to generous donations, Noah's mother was able to recoup the money... and then some.
The boy unknowingly sent 51 cases of popsicles in the shape of his favorite cartoon character SpongeBob to his aunt's door. The three large packages weighed about 70 pounds in total. The cost came out to $2,619 for 918 popsicles.
The story quickly picked up steam and was covered by news outlets globally. Noah's mother is still baffled by the response.
"I've had people from the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the UK DM me to tell me that Noah was trending there" Noah's mother Jennifer Bryant said.
Bryant is a full-time social work student at NYU, a counselor for the Department of Corrections, and a mother of three young boys.
"In the beginning I honestly thought it was a dream. I realized it wasn't a dream when I started getting creepy phone calls from people. I was like nah boo, this is real," Bryant continued.
When the story gained traction on Facebook, Katie Schloss, a classmate of Bryant at NYU, offered to help. Schloss asked Bryant if she could set up a GoFundMe to cover the costs of the popsicles. For a few days, Bryant was so overwhelmed with the attention that she asked all media requests to be passed on to Schloss.
The GoFundMe's original goal has been surpassed more than 10 times over, totaling nearly $25,00 dollars as of Wednesday, May 12.
"Amazon will not take back the popsicles. And Ms. Bryant, mom to 3 boys, doesn't know how she's going to be able to pay this off, in addition to student loans and all of her family's other expenses." reads the GoFundMe page.
Bryant hopes to use some of the excess money to pay for Noah, who has autism spectrum disorder, to attend a specialized school to meet his needs.
Bryant says Noah has an idea of what he did, but does not fully understand it yet. "I tell Noah about this every day. He's going to be able to tell the world the story," Bryant said.
I'm just so grateful for all of the support. I told Noah that he has so many new friends now and he's so excited," Bryant continued.
Noah was only able to eat a few of the popsicles before the hundreds of others melted within a few days.
