PORTLAND, Ore. — When you think of Santa Claus, the guy in the red and white suit, with the bushy white beard comes to mind.
Outside a Southeast Portland home, this Santa was wearing a blue button-down shirt with matching blue slacks and a FedEx logo on his shirt.
When 11-year-old Jax Menasco was outside his home in the Lents neighborhood on Tuesday, a FedEx delivery truck stopped near his house. The driver, Nate Pura, got out of the box van, walked over to Jax's mom, Jennifer, and handed her a package.
He also handed Jax a special surprise at the same time.
"Then he came over to me. I was kind of intrigued and then he gave me a Pokémon card, so I was just pleasantly surprised," Jax said.
Pokémon cards are something Jax had been talking about starting to collect. They're even on his Christmas list this year.
At the time, the driver was anonymous, but thanks to him, Christmas had come early this year.
"I was looking forward to getting them and then some guy just randomly gave me a rare one too. I was pretty happy with that." Jax said, eyes beaming with pure joy.
The card Jax received is a holographic version of Lucario, it's a somewhat rare, sought after card in the popular card game. Holographic cards are usually sought after and considered to be rarer.
"It's just kind of fun and also some of the Pokémon look kind of cool," Jax said.
Two days after, Pura surprised Jax the first time, he was back again. This time there were no packages being delivered. He had gone out of his way to hand-deliver a special surprise just for Jax. A brand new tin full of unwrapped cards.
"I got pretty excited because I saw it was the same guy again," Jax said seeing the mystery driver at his door, "So we opened them and there was a bunch of pretty cool cards."
Jax's collection of Pokémon cards was well underway all thanks to the then-unknown FedEx delivery driver that somehow knew what was on his Christmas list.
Jax has one big message for him for the unknown Santa in the white box FedEx van:
"Thank you and you're amazing and thank you for doing this! I don't even know why you did this, but it's really nice and I hope you can get a raise or something because that's amazing!" Jax said.
Nate Pura said the gesture, "It was just, random acts of kindness is something I enjoy doing. It’s just kind of part of who I am."
"2020 has been a heck of ride for everyone," said Pura. "So, I just figured – with the kids having to live in a, kind of, different world than from, probably, what some of us have grown up knowing. I was just trying to brighten their day – giving out Pokémon cards."
Jax isn't the first kid that Pura has given the cards do, he was trying to do the acts of kindness under the radar.
"I was trying to do it -- almost like a drive-by, in a way. Like, with the package, leave it, get out as quick as I could without being seen because that was the goal, to kind of make it random," said Pura.
"That’s all I really want to do, because, again, 2020 has been a rough year and it really triggered really bad anxiety for myself and so in the process, I was trying to keep myself level and calm and thought if I could maybe pass that along to others in some way, it would help everybody get through this mess of a year."