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3-Year-Old Girl Thinks Stranger Is Santa Claus And His Response Is Christmas Magic

When a child has the opportunity to meet Santa Claus face-to-face, it is typically a very special moment. They usually see him at the mall or perhaps in a parade and their little eyes just light up with wonder when they see him. He really shows us the innocence of children as they sit on his lap and tell him all of their wishes for that year.

Sometimes we may see this in ways that we didn’t anticipate. It happened when a little girl saw a man in a grocery store that reminded her of Santa Claus. She approached him and his reaction is warming hearts all over the world.

It began when Robert Riley had his two daughters out for some shopping at the Walmart in Hurricane, West Virginia. His three-year-old daughter, Sophie Jo Riley noticed a man and instantly was sure she saw Santa Claus. Most parents wouldn’t have given him much thought but to her, it was someone special.

“She was just sneaking around the aisle, had her back against the toys,” her older sister Miya Lupashunski told WSAZ. “We were behind her, and she’d put her finger up to her lips and go ‘Shh! It’s Santa!’”

The man was not dressed up as Santa but he did have a white beard and was wearing a red sweatshirt. Sophie went over to talk to him after she was encouraged to do so.

The man’s name was not Chris Kringle but rather, it is Roger Larck. He might not have the official title of Santa but to this little girl, it is exactly who he was.

“Santa?” Sophie asks as she approaches him. “I’ve been called worse,” he replied.

When he saw the look in little Sophie’s eyes, he decided that he would become Santa Claus for a few minutes.

Sophie showed him her pretty nails and let him know that they will have cookies ready when he arrives at their house. He wanted to know if all of the cookies were for him but she tells him he can only have one. The other are for the reindeer, even though she knows they only typically eat grass.

“They do, but up in the North Pole, grass is pretty hard to come by,” Larck replies back to Sophie.

The entire meeting was recorded by Sophie’s sister on her cell phone. The video was then posted on social media and it has been viewed millions of times.

“If there really was a Santa Claus, and now I question it,” Sophie’s mother Erika Riley said, “I think maybe there really is. That’s exactly how I picture him to be.”

As for Larck, he was happy to do what he could for Sophie at that moment.

“I’m tickled I’ve been a part of something that other people have enjoyed,” Larck said. “It was just me having a conversation with a little girl. It melted my heart when it happened.”

“It’s real, it’s pure,” Robert Riley says about the video below. “It’s innocence. It’s Christmas.”

You can see more of the encounter in this video: