After eating breakfast on Saturday, a regular customer at a Bellevue cafe left a $3000 tip on a $39.60 bill and left without saying a word.  This is a warm, fuzzy holiday story to the max.

The servers at the Brief Encounter Cafe in Bellevue were on the receiving end of a major random act of kindness Saturday.  It totally paid off for those folks to roll out of bed and get in to work even if they might rather have been Christmas shopping, and now they'll have a lot more cash to work with.

A regular weekend customer came in for breakfast and spent about forty bucks on breakfast, and then surprised everyone when he left a $3000 tip and included a hand-written note on the back of the receipt so the staff would know it was legit.  He also left his phone number in case the credit card company had any questions about the validity of that super-inflated tip on the small bill.

KTVB says the customer turned out to be Dwayne Clark, the CEO of Aegis Living.  His bio on the company website says, "Dwayne was raised from humble beginnings by a single mom who gave him his greatest gift, the confidence that he could do anything."

And he mentioned his mom in the note on the receipt at the cafe.  It said, "You guys do a great job! When I was 7, I washed dishes and my mom cooked in a diner like this. We were dirt poor and didn't have money for Christmas. Hopefully, this will help all of you have a better Christmas."

How awesome is that?!  When these stories spread it usually encourages other people to pay it forward too, so if you're a Treasure Valley server I'd be watching the receipts closely for an amazing surprise tip in the next week or so.  That regular pancake-eater could totally make your Christmas.

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