Woman pays for random child's birthday cake every year in honour of late daughter

The mother has been performing the touching tradition for almost ten years

(Getty Images)

A grieving mother buys a cake for a child she doesn’t know every year in memory of her late daughter.

Ashley Santi, 33, from Scottsdale, Arizona, lost her little girl, McKenna Jodell, in 2008.

Just nine-months-old at the time, McKenna sadly died of a traumatic brain injury after a television accidentally fell on her.

Since then, every year on what would be the day of her daughter’s birthday, Santi goes into a local bakery and pays for a random child’s birthday cake in McKenna’s honour.

This year, she purchased a cake for an 11–year-old girl named Madison, whose older brother Kyle Jauregui shared the good deed online.

“So today is my sister’s birthday and when we went to pick up her cake someone had already paid for it,” he wrote on Twitter.

“It was left with this card…my family was speechless and we just want to say thank you to McKenna’s mom and wish McKenna a Happy Birthday. There’s still good in this world.”

In the now viral post, which has been liked more than 200k times, Jauregui also shared an image of his sister with the cake and the kind letter left by Santi.

“Dear Birthday Girl Family, in honour of my daughter’s 10th birthday I have chosen your birthday cake to pay for,” the note read.

“Each year I do this random act of kindness because I am unable to buy my daughter a cake of her own. Today is her big double digit birthday. Please enjoy your day.”

The mother also revealed that she was inspired to start her annual acts of kindness after joining the MISS Foundation – an organisation that supports families who have lost a child.

Part of the programme is encouraging bereaved family members to take part in random acts of kindness as a way of honouring their loved ones.