What would you do?

A few weeks ago I was leaving the local shopping centre, with a nice hot take-away meal in a bag in my hand, when a woman with a pram approached me. She'd run out of money, she told me, wasn't getting paid until the next day, and needed infant formula. Could I give her some money so she could buy it?

I wasn't totally convinced, but I wasn't totally unconvinced either. She looked reasonably healthy- she didn't seem to have a drug problem. Then again, how would I really know?

I knew that the best thing to do would be to walk down to the supermarket with her and buy the infant formula, but my dinner was hot, I was tired, and just wanted a good sit down on the couch at home. So I just gave her the money and said "I'm trusting you to spend it on formula".

Afterwards it occurred to me that perhaps I should have looked in the pram for the baby - it had been well covered. I was pretty sure that I'd been duped.

Jesus tells us to give to those who ask for money (Matt 5:42), but I assume that he wouldn't be wanting us to encourage another person's dishonesty or drug habit. Any thoughts about how to handle these kinds of situations? What would you have done?