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This inspiring story was kindly sent to us by Adrian Mieras. It really touches the heart to read that despite the problems the world has today, there really are still good, kind people amongst us.

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counsellor assured me that he would be a good, reliable waiter. I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn’t sure I wanted one. I wasn’t sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech associated with Downs Syndrome. I wasn’t worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don’t generally care who waits on them as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids travelling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded ‘truck stop germ’; the white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

I shouldn’t have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I didn’t really care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21 year old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customer was finished! He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully load dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learnt that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their social security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stveie being sent to a group home. That’s why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn’t unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that hew was out of surgery, in recovery and doing fine.

Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular truck customers, stared at the sight of this fifty year old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Belle Ringer a withering look. He grinned, ‘OK Frannie, what was all that about?’ he asked…. ‘We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay’ she replied. ‘I wondered where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?’

Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the two other drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie’s surgery, then sighed: ‘Yeah, I’m glad he going to be okay but I don’t know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear they’re barely getting by as it is’. Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn’t had the time to replace Stevie and didn’t really want to replace him, the girls were waiting on their own tables until that day when we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.
‘What’s up?’ I asked
‘I didn’t get that table where Belle Ringer and his friends were sitting cleared off until after they left. Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there when I got back to clean it off’ she said. ‘This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup’.

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed ‘Something for Stevie’.

‘Pony Pete asked me what that was all about,’ she said ‘so I told him about Stevie and him Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this.’ She handed me another paper napkin that had ‘Something for Stevie’ scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply ‘truckers.’

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back at work.

His placement worker said he’d been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn’t matter at all that it was a holiday. He called ten times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both in to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn’t stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and cart were waiting.

‘Hold up there Stevie, not so fast,’ I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. ‘Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mom is on me.’ I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table…..sitting on dozens of folded paper napkins. ‘First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess,’ I said. I tried to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mom, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had ‘something for Stevie’ printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking out from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turmed to his mom, ‘there’s more than $10, 000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everyone hollering and shouting and there were a few tears as well.

But you know what’s funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie with a big, big smile on his face was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table. Best worker I ever hired.

Plant a seed and watch it grow.

Author – unknown