• Holly LaFavers, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her 8-year-old son Liam, learned her son purchased 70,000 lollipops from Amazon May 3.
• The lollipops cost $4,200 and emptied her bank account, though she ended up getting a refund May 5.

What started as a nightmare scenario for a Lexington mother has turned into a heartwarming story of community support after she was refunded for roughly 70,000 Dum-Dums lollipops her 8-year-old son mistakenly ordered from Amazon.

Holly LaFavers and her son, Liam, were getting ready for church the morning of May 4. Everything was normal — until she checked her bank account and found it in the negative. The cause of the overdrawn account? A $4,200 charge for 30 boxes of Dum-Dums — each box containing 2,300 lollipops.

“I had just gotten paid, and so we had run a bunch of errands the day before,” LaFavers said. “I was just looking to see like how much we had spent the day before, but when I opened up my bank account, it was in the red, and so I completely panicked.”

She learned her son had placed the order while playing on her phone May 3. Liam occasionally plays on his mother’s phone and browses Amazon, though he normally only puts items in the cart.

“He is not allowed to touch the ‘Buy Now’ button. He knows that. I truly do not know how this happened, because typically at night, I’ll just go in and delete everything out of my Amazon account that he’s put in there,” LaFavers said.

The discovery of a drained bank account upended the single mother’s day, setting off a series of calls with Amazon representatives as she tried to get the purchase refunded. They instructed her to reject the order when the delivery driver arrived, so she waited.

“I had no money, I had no ability to put gas in my car or nothing, and so we stayed home from church, watching the app and just making sure that we did not miss the delivery truck,” LaFavers said.

But that plan was derailed when the first 22 boxes of lollipops were delivered without a knock, with no delivery driver in sight by the time Liam found them on the front stoop while he was out for a scooter ride.

There were eight more boxes yet to be delivered, which arrived later that day and were successfully sent back with the driver, LaFavers said.

She still, however, had nearly two dozen boxes of lollipops on her hands — more than any mother-son duo could need. So she found a solution: Sell them.

She posted about the ordeal on Facebook, and many people from her hometown of Somerset took her up on the offer.

“Those individuals were the ones who really stepped up,” LaFavers said “One person said that one of the banks in town will take five of the boxes. And my chiropractor that I saw in Somerset, he said that he would take two of the boxes.”

LaFavers’ good fortune continued May 5 when Amazon agreed to refund the $4,200.

Amazon spokesperson Austin Stowe confirmed the refund, writing in a statement: “We’re glad we were able to work directly with this customer to turn a sticky situation into something sweet.”

With her bank account back in the positive, LaFavers still had heaps of lollipops to offload. She decided not to sell them, instead opting to donate them to charities.

After coming into her life as a 4-month-old baby, Liam was diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder at age 4, LaFavers said. The condition can cause a range of physical, behavioral and cognitive impairments as a result of exposure to alcohol before birth, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

For Liam, it affects his ability to anticipate the consequences of his decisions, LaFavers said. It also causes him to hyper-fixate on things, which is why she believes he was looking at lollipops in the first place. Liam has been infatuated with carnivals as of late, LaFavers said, and he told her that he wanted to use the lollipops as prizes for winning games.

Just like he imagined that fateful day, Liam now gets get to give away thousands of lollipops — something he’s been thoroughly enjoying.

“He would honestly give the shirt off his back, like it makes him feel good,” she said. “He would give you anything that he has, and so he has truly, truly found joy in giving his suckers.”

Contact reporter Killian Baarlaer at kbaarlaer@gannett.com or @bkillian72 on X.