Behold, the healing power of a hat, as told by the Duluth Tribune’s Sam Cook today.

Kandi Geary, 60, was putting on her mittens and hat as she was about to leave a Kohl’s store in Duluth, when a woman walking in said, ‘I like your hat.”

She wondered where Geary had purchased it, but she didn’t know. A friend had given her the hat. She was giving away all of her hats, which she’d accumulated when she had cancer and her hair was falling out.

“I was just diagnosed with cancer,” the woman said. “We’re just coming from the oncologist.”

Then she started crying, Cook says.

“I took the hat off my head and handed it to her,” Geary said. “She said, ‘No, that’s OK.’ And I said, ‘No. You have to have this hat.’ ” “Are you sure?” the woman asked Geary. “I said, ‘I’m solidly sure this hat belongs with you,’ ” Geary said. That’s when the woman’s daughter spoke up. The girl appeared to be about 8 or 9, Geary said. As she spoke, she was half-smiling, half-crying, Geary said. “We came here to buy a hat,” the girl told Geary. And the girl’s mom said, “This is the first time I’ve felt like God is with me in this,” Geary said. “I said to her and the girl, ‘I hope this hat reminds you you’re never alone on this journey,’ ” Geary said. “I said to the little girl, ‘You remember, you’re never alone.’ ”

Geary said her friend, the cancer survivor, would be glad to know the hat is on its way to helping another cancer patient.