It can be a gnarly, frightening, gator-eat-gator world out there, so you’ll have to forgive us if we’re big softies for stories like the one featured above. Love What Matters shared the tale of a man’s remarkable feat of generosity that repeatedly mashes your ‘THE FEELS” button in your chest.
The man you see sitting at his booth at a Utah Denny’s requested to have his meal served by a single mother. It was a bit of an odd request, but the establishment complied and the gent was served by a mom named Crystal. To the surprise of everyone at the restaurant, the man ponied up the dough to pay the bills for the seven families that came in and ate. And, as for Crystal, she was given a whopping $1,500 tip for a bill that came to $21.34. It was a hefty chunk of dough that was able to get the server and her son out of a shelter and on their way to their new residence. No one knew the man’s name, so his picture was all that people could go off of to identify him. He was asked why he was moved to be so generous to the collection of strangers at the diner. His response: “Family is everything, I’ve lost all mine.”
The charitable customer was later revealed by Fox affiliate KRIV to be Briggs VanNess. The station nudged VanNess to share more about what motivated him to seek out a single mother to help in such a big fashion.
“I grew up with a single mother of six — we were poor and homeless a lot. I’d spend many nights at my mother’s friends’ houses, my mother was dying from cancer but some how managed to survive,” said VanNess. “But I watched and suffered for years as I watched her work her hands to the bone to give us a good life. She raised us to be kind and help others. Many years down the road I was facing prison and getting in trouble and it ended up causing me to lose my family because I was a really terrible person.”
VanNess says he’s now “found the light” and is using his current success as a business owner to pay it back and be someone that helps those in need. Although there’s been an unexpected quirk to his insta-viral act of kindness: it seems people have been helping themselves to his identity to use on dating profiles, because sometimes people are truly the worst.
(Via Dateline)
