GLACE BAY, N.S. -- A Cape Breton woman is thanking a local roofing company for stepping up and saving her home.

Jeanette MacDonald has been waiting for a grant so she can fix her leaky roof, but the money hasn't come through.

What has come through, however, is the generosity of a total stranger.

The 70-year-old woman has lived in her home in Glace Bay, N.S., for 35 years, and the property is showing show its age.

She has been using a blue tarp to cover the holes in her roof, but it’s no match for Mother Nature, especially on rainy days, when MacDonald spends most of her time trying to keep her home dry.

“We need buckets and everything to catch the water,” she says.

While the blue tarp isn’t much of a solution in wet and windy weather, it did catch the eye of Jeremy Locke, who recently started a roofing company in the community.

“I noticed the house there by the bakery for quite some time. The roof has been in bad shape for a little bit now, so we seen her outside one day and the crew talked about it and we decided it would be something we would try to do,” says Locke.

He initially told MacDonald that he would put a new roof on her house for free, but it wasn’t that easy.

MacDonald thanked him for the offer, but she turned it down, saying she was waiting for a grant she had applied for to replace her aging shingles.

"I don't like taking anything from anybody. I don't know why, but I don't feel right," says MacDonald. "I don't feel right about it."

“She saved the flyer and she said she would give us a call right away if the grant came through, but I guess it never did,” says Locke.

So, he continued to insist that he do the work, and MacDonald finally gave in.

“I don’t know if God sent him or who sent him, but somebody sent him,” she says of Locke. “You couldn’t meet a nicer guy, I’m telling you.”

MacDonald received some more good news on Sunday, when another company stepped up and offered to install a heat pump.

Meanwhile, the work on the roof begins Monday.

“We actually had some volunteers that reached out,” says Locke. “I don’t even know how many people to expect.

"If I won a million dollars it wouldn't make me as happy as getting that roof fixed," says MacDonald.

MacDonald says she considers Locke her angel and can’t thank him enough for coming to her rescue.

“It’s just a miracle, is all I can say, a miracle. I’ll never ever forget him, never.”