his real name was sam stone, a successful canton businessman. >> b.ntion of his, an amalgam of his three daughter's name "barbara, virginia and dottsie." >> reporter: stone's grandson only learned of his grandfather's charitable at ego when he opened up this suitcase that had a couple hundred letters addressed to b. virdot. >> they were from the same week in december of 1933. >> reporter: the discovery led him to write a book called "a secret gift." >> "it looks pretty dark sometimes but we still hold on to that ray of hope." >> reporter: ted said his grandfather answered that letter with a $5 check, which would be like $100 today." >> so that's where we picked up. we said let's make this guy live again. >> reporter: after hearing the story, a small group of local businessmen stepped into the shadows and up to the plate. >> the generosity of that man sparked us about how neat it would be to reenact it, to get it going again. >> reporter: the new b. virdots pledged $15,000, which resulted in 800 letters. >> "i have no job, no money." >> reporter: to se

and then i realized he forgot was my grandfather, sam stone. let me show you what i saw when i opened the suitcase. these are the actual checks. this is one of the letters. can "repository." that's what i found. over the next two years i said about trying to track down what happened to the people who wrote to b. virdot. i wanted to know if they survived the depression. did they escape poverty, what became of their children, did they know about the b. virdot gift? that was one mission that i put myself on. and the other one was why did my grandfather make this gift? let me address the second one first, if i may. i knew my grandfather well. i thought i knew my grandfather well. he was a lot of fun, and i had his birth certificate from pittsburgh that showed he was born in 1888. i had his passport. and he told me about growing up in pittsburgh. in the course of doing my research i discovered that all his documents were fraudulent. that he wasn't born in pittsburgh, that he was, in fact, a romanian refugee who the country at the age of 15 in 1902,