Recession Angels Rise to the Occasion

This recession has no lack of villains. There are predatory lenders, super scammers like Bernard Madoff, and propped-up CEOs who insist on their multimillion-dollar bonuses while Americans lose their homes and watch their savings plunge.

Some Americans step up big to lend a hand during the recession.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

But there is also a group of Americans who have done extraordinarily generous things, even as the economy around them crumbles.

Call them recession angels, people who have taken their own money and given it to employees and their communities just as everybody else has been cutting back.

Click Here for the Latest Business Stories From ABC News

Take Danny Cottrell, the owner of a pharmacy in a tiny town in southern Alabama.

He decided recently that the town of Brewton needed its own stimulus and that his 24 employees deserved a little something extra. So he doled out $16,000 in cash bonuses. Every full-time worker got $700 and every part-time employee got $300.

Cottrell asked only that his workers donate 15 percent to a charity or somebody who was in worse shape than they were, and then take the rest and spend it at local businesses. To track the local impact of his "stimulus," Cottrell handed out the bonuses in $2 bills.

"I handed them their $2 bills and turned them loose," he told ABC News. "They've done a good job. I've been very pleased. They bought into it. It's really been a lot of fun. It's sort of taken on a life of its own."

Related

The New Reality: Living With the Recession

WATCH: Person of the Week: Leonard Abess

Lunch Crunch: 7 Easy Ways to Cut Your Bill

The money has been spent on clothing, livestock feed, auto parts and at restaurants and bakeries in the town of roughly 5,500 people.

Pharmacist Danny Cottrell with his employees and their $2 bills.

"A lot of them were businesses that they had never been to before," Cottrell said. "They're like everybody else. They're immediately attracted to the big-box stores."

Lonna Jackson has worked for seven years as a cashier at Cottrell's pharmacy.

When Cottrell gathered his employees for an announcement, she and some of her co-workers feared the worst: layoffs. Then he announced the bonuses.

"We sat there, mouths opened. Some cried. We were all just in shock," Jackson said.

With her $700, Jackson donated money to a neighbor in need and then bought fabric for her sewing group which makes baby blankets for neonatal units at area hospitals. She plans on spending the rest of the money on car tires.

The money was a big help for Jackson who has been trimming her spending, fearing a layoff or some other recession-related challenge.

"You cut back on everything because you just don't know," she said.

When she got the cash, Jackson thought carefully about where to spend it.

"When you have it in your hand, it makes you think of the smaller stores and businesses that are struggling right now," she said.

And as cashier at the pharmacy, she has seen plenty of those $2 bills circle back to Cottrell's business.

"I just hope there are more people out there like him," she said.