People who prey on other's generosity--I'm so mad I could spit

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Last Friday my husband and I were painting our van at a do-it-yourself garage. We decided to go get some groceries while we were waiting for the paint to bake. As we exited the store and were walking to our minivan, this woman comes up to us looking hysterical and claimed that she needed a ride to go pick up a girl who was at a crack house and drag her out of there. She claimed to be the girl's sponsor. After listening to her for a few minutes, we decided to give her a ride even though it would take us quite a ways away from where we were going, which would have only been a few blocks away. She gets in the van and immediately starts telling us to open the windows or turn on the AC and is talking a mile a minute about how she was a former user and how she was clean for 3 years and was sponsoring this girl and the girl had called and said she was high and needed to get out of there. During the ride her story changed a couple of times and I was getting annoyed. I had an open bag of grapes on my lap that I'd been snacking on because I hadn't eaten all day and she actually had the nerve to reach her hand in and grab one, and then when I looked at her like she was nuts she said "well, they're just sitting there and I'm hungry." Meanwhile, it's getting close to 5pm and I've got to get my son from daycare by 6pm, and we still needed to drop this girl off, get back to the garage and pick up the van and drive back to our town to get our boy. She's giving us sob stories about how she's got kids and can't afford to feed them and lost her job and by this time I'm really getting irritated. She said the food bank wouldn't let her have any food til Tuesday and she only had five bucks on her to get her through the weekend and that's why she needed a ride to get her downtown. By the end of the ride I was starting to feel like we were just giving her a ride to go score or something herself. Her story didn't add up and when we pulled up to the street where she wanted to get dropped off she got out and didn't even say thank you or anything; just started yelling at some guy. I figured we'd been used, but thought that on the off chance that there actually was a girl in trouble, we'd done something good there. Yeah, I'm an idiot. At least she didn't rob us. Anyway, I'm at Walmart with my son this morning around the same area where we picked this woman up and we're walking out to the parking lot when I see the same woman. She made a comment to me about how I shop around there a lot and I pretty much ignored her and kept walking. Then I noticed that she was approaching nearly every person in the parking lot and actually halting vehicles, asking them for a ride. I got pissed. I'll admit it. I was furious. I called the Walmart customer service (the phone number was on my receipt) to let them know that a woman was harassing people in the parking lot, and was prepared to let it go, but then I decided to swing around one more time. She'd moved on to the Staples parking lot and was stopping vehicles on their way out of the parking lot to ask them for a ride. I pulled up beside her and asked her to come over. She was like "hey, can you give me a ride down to --" and I cut her off and said "NO. I don't know if you remember me but I was the one who gave you a ride downtown a few days ago." There was a spark of recognition and she said "oh yes, and bless you. I really needed that." I said I saw her asking nearly everyone in the parking lot for a ride and it really made me feel like sh|t because I thought I was doing something good to help her out and it turns out that she was just using me as her own personal taxi. She said "I hitchhike a lot" and I told her that I thought what she'd done was disgusting. I said that hitchhiking is something you do when someone's on their way in that direction anyway. I went an hour out of my way (half hour there and back), used up a bunch of gas and was almost late getting my son from daycare. She took advantage of my generosity and willingness to help someone out. She apologized and said "I have a sh|tty life" and I told her that a lot of people do, to some extent. I told her to get a job and visit a food bank. Then she said that the food bank wouldn't let her go until Thursday. I said "that's funny, because on Friday you told me they wouldn't let you in til Tuesday, which was yesterday". She was like "oh yeah, they um...gave me some beans. My kids had some beans yesterday." I know for a fact the food banks here give more than beans, and this woman was totally lying to me. I feel like a total sucker. I told her she was disgusting for using people and she apologized. I told her I didn't think she was sorry, and she'd likely go back to doing the same thing after I left. She said sorry again and I drove away. Have any of you ever had someone abuse your hospitality, or take advantage of your generosity? Have you ever been suckered by someone? How did you handle the situation? Today I felt like I had to say something to her or it would have eaten away at me for the rest of the day. How well do you think I handled the situation?