Sad Wal-Mart Story

A sister and her brother were inside a new Wal-Mart. The sister at eight years of age and the brother seventeen years of age. The brother was wanting to buy a present for his little sister because her birthday was coming up. As they were about to leave, she had to go to the bathroom. Her brother showed her where the restrooms were and he began looking at earrings he thought she might like for her birthday. As he started o buy the earrings, he saw people running from the end of the store screaming and yelling with fear. In the next moment he smelled smoke and saw flames. He ran to his little sister as fast as he could but when he got to the bathrooms the fire was already blazing. He knew he had  to make sure help was coming. When the fire trucks arrived it was already too late. They assured the family that there were no survivors. Two days later the family got a call from the hospital. They told them that they had someone there by the name of Sandy. They asked, ‘How did you get this number?’ The hospital replied that the little girl had a purse clutched in her little hand with a card that gave her name and number on it. The family drove to the hospital to see their little angel. While they thanked God for her survival, they noticed her arms were burnt so severely they were both amputated and her face was burned and she needed surgery. The family didn’t have any health insurance and very little money to cover the bill. This family needs our HELP!
NOTE:Every time someone reposts this story, YAHOO will take $2.00 off the hospital bill. DO
NOT DELETE! MYSPACE IS TRACKING THIS! Please forward this ‘Sad
Wal-Mart Story’. God knows who you are. Karma knows it could happen to you!

I actually received this message several times.  Janee forwarded this message to me on the social networking site Facebook.  She had received it from a friend.  The message follows the format of many similar email forwards claiming to tell the story of lost, injured, or otherwise impaired persons who will receive money for each time a message is forwarded.  All of these messages are false for several reasons. First of all, there is no way that these companies can track these emails or forwards because they do not have the technology to do so.  AOL also states on its restrictions/limitations page that it does not give money to individuals.

This specific email can also be found on the Snopes website, but it is still forwarded often by people meaning to be good Samaritans.  The money donated in the message has been attributed to AOL, Myspace, and in later versions to Facebook. It has apparently been circulating as far back as August of 2003.
Annotation: Mikkelson, Barbara. “Wal-Mart Fire.” Snopes. 17 Aug. 2007. 17 Feb. 2008

<http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/children/walmart.asp>.