out who will be crowned the newest and the 10th american idol mccreery and lauren alaina going head to head last night. courtney friel live in los angeles. first off, this whole thing started with some drama with lauren and her vocal cords. i know. i bet you wish you were here. we got a tmz alert an hour before the show that lauren wasn t able to sing because her vocal cord were hurting her and haley would be singing instead. that didn t end up being true. they went to their country roots singing three songs. one was a favorite of the season and the other was their idol s choice. another was a future single. lauren was the favorite and that s one of the conspiracies out there this morning that maybe the producers leaked this information to get her some pity votes. i don t know. i was in the audience.
in this white fraem house on main street, lauren quietly amassed he held on to it for a while. reporter: a fortune. let me see it. i have never seen a check like that before. reporter: that first $20,000 check was followed by two more, $100,000 each. he said, my god, look at this. look at this. reporter: up until then the seniors had been getting by on what the county gave them, $600 a year. well, we got $220,000 total. reporter: and lauren wasn t done. sdmree loved his church. reporter: lauren willed roughly $1 million to st. path rick s catholic church. he came here for many, many, many years, and then he revealed i think we re blessed. reporter: when lauren let the presbyterians more than $100,000 too. we re looking at the new steel roof that we put on our church thanks to lauren. reporter: checks for the same amount were delivered to bethany bible church and to the
people who wouldn t give a nickel to live in leroy, minnesota, that wouldn t give the quarter they charge for coffee at the leroy senior citizens center. if they take another cookie, it s another quarter. reporter: people who need to pull up a chair and listen. my god, we ve never had this kind of money. reporter: as eileen evans tells the story of small town values and a check. we didn t know what to do. my god, $20,000. the envelope arrived from the estate of 94-year-old lauren krueger, a retired farmer who had seen his share of sadness, having lost his first wife and then his second, having lost his only child, a teenage son, to cancer, but long before he passed away last year lauren gained a reputation. very frugal. he was very careful with his money. reporter: apparently so. as he humbly lived out his days
that s the kind of community we live in. reporter: they were joined by the ruth rans in paying for improvements at the community pool. makes you feel good. reporter: good. uh-huh. reporter: the way the seniors felt when they wrote a $10,000 check to grace christian church. thank you for your generous gift. reporter: which had the misfortune of being the only church in leroy we wanted to share. reporter: founded after lauren had made out his will. why not give it away? it was give to us. we didn t have it before, so why not help other people that are in need too? reporter: frugal was the word pinned on lauren krueger in life. generous is the way he will be remembered. it s astounding what he did. reporter: there are still people who wouldn t give a nickel to live in leroy. christmas reporter: but folks around here prefer to put their money in the kind of person who give everything.
lutherans. who already used some of lauren s gift to repair their bell tower. we were notified through his attorney. reporter: that old pumper truck behind the chief? it s an 80. reporter: plans are to replace it with a new one thanks to the $ 20,000 lauren left the fire department. this is our quarters. reporter: another $220,000 allowed the ambulance service to build an apartment. we have to get another bed in here yet. reporter: for its on call emts. nobody honest to go-ahead. reporter: all told lauren spread some $3 million around a town of 925 people. let it snow, let it snow, let it snow reporter: but to suggest that giving ended in a $3 million flurry is to show you have a little more to learn with leroy. the churches were all aware the town s assisted living are center needed a new kitchen, so together they re sharing some of the money lauren gave them.