![Brooklyn mom Cassy Rivera shares a smile with daughters Aniahya and Alayza as they give Christmas gifts to the needy. Brooklyn mom Cassy Rivera shares a smile with daughters Aniahya and Alayza as they give Christmas gifts to the needy.](https://www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2011/12/24/34FHOZQRJD7YMSXBUZWVR2VESQ.jpg?w=535)
To Cassy Rivera, there’s no more beautiful sight than a grateful smile.
The once-blind Brooklyn mother whose vision was restored in a risky surgery two years ago has quietly become the city’s ultimate do-gooder.
She lends money to a revolving cast of down-on-their-luck souls, hands out MetroCards on a whim and buys toys for homeless children even though she is indigent herself.
Rivera, 38, asks for nothing in return. Even a “thank you” is not required.
Her reward is seeing people smile.
“Since I got my sight back, I don’t like to see people with frowns. I really don’t like that,” Rivera said Friday, hours before she dropped off gifts at a homeless shelter.
“I love seeing people smile and laugh.”
Rivera’s not your typical New York City philanthropist.
Most of her vision was stolen four years ago by an aggressive illness called uveitis.
Adding to her heartbreak, she lost her last bit of sight while giving birth to her second daughter, Aniahya, now almost 4 years old.
Unemployed and broke, Rivera’s outlook was bleak.
But in 2009, Dr. Michael Samson, a specialist with the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, restored her vision with an extraordinary procedure, replacing the damaged lenses of her eyes with prosthetic ones.
Samson’s clinic even picked up the bills that weren’t covered by Medicaid.
In the years that followed, Rivera tried to return to her job as a medical assistant, but her inconsistent vision barred her from working.
So the divorced mom turned her focus to the needy.
Rivera, who survives on a $659 disability check, said she saves up $50 a month to help out a homeless man in her Williamsburg neighborhood, a Brownsville woman who’s facing eviction and an asthmatic woman unable to buy her medication.
And there are others.
When family friend Clarence Williams got out of prison in September, one of the first calls he received was from Rivera, who wanted to buy him clothes.
“I didn’t even know she was going to take me shopping. She just did it,” said Williams, 33.
“She’s a magnificent person.”
Last week, Rivera handed out $50 worth of Metrocards to straphangers near Rockefeller Center
And on Friday, Rivera doled out a mountain of toys, multi-colored candy canes and squares of frosted sponge cake to about 30 families at the St. John’s Family Center in Weeksville.
She was only able to afford the haul after getting the greenlight from her 9-year-old daughter, Alayza, who gave up her Christmas gifts this year.
“This means a lot,” said Sandra McIllwain, a mother of two who picked up a racecar and scribble pad for her kids.
“It’s really good and thoughtful of her to do this. God bless her.”
Maria Bonilla, 22, came with her one-year-old daughter Yamilka Villegas.
“She’s very generous. I wish more people were like her,” said Bonilla.
Rivera is planning to return in Easter, with more gifts and more treats.
“My friend said, ‘You’re crazy. You don’t have no money,'” Rivers said. “I said, ‘We’ll get by one way or another. These kids don’t have nothing.”
Rivera said she knows she’s still at risk of once again losing her sight.
That possibility only helps fuel her desire to give.
“When I couldn’t see, I was dead. I couldn’t do anything,” Rivera said. “Now, I can see people laughing and saying, ‘Thank you,’ to me.
“My happiness is my sight, and I will never, ever, ever stop loving and giving.”