Christmas lights on home in Southern California. (Doug Meek / Shutterstock)

Veteran Recovering from Cancer Surprised with Thousands of Christmas Lights

By Kayla Kunkel December 7, 2019 at 10:24am

A south Florida veteran was overwhelmed with gratitude after receiving a heartwarming Christmas surprise on Tuesday.

Florida Power & Light Company has gathered volunteers to help surprise veterans for the holidays for the past 11 years, according to WTVT.

This year Florida Power & Light decided to spread Christmas cheer to a decorated veteran named Chris Scott.

Scott served eight years in the Marines before medically retiring in 2012.

More recently he has been battling against stage three lymphoma cancer for the past two years.

Even though he has been cleared, he is still recovering, which made decorating for Christmas difficult.

Thankfully, Florida Power & Light stepped up to help.

“Just the satisfaction of being able to do something for someone that’s really the reason for the season to give back joy. It’s a little thing for some people but I hope it’s a huge thing for this family,” Rae Dowling, the area manager for Florida Power & Light, told WTVT.

Scott said the kind gesture really helped his family out.

“They wanted to get lights up so we were going to start to try and work on it this week,” he said, “but I haven’t been feeling too good lately so this helps out a lot.”

When he first saw his house decorated, he was overwhelmed with gratitude.

“This is a lot. This is amazing. Thank you guys for caring,” he told the volunteers.

Florida Power & Light’s kind act isn’t over yet, however. They have also offered to help Scott take down the decorations after the holiday season.

“You go over and you fight. You fight for your country,” Scott said.

“It was just a duty that I decided I needed to do and to come home and be taken care of by people and people caring and people doing stuff like this — it’s really special.”

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