'Wonderful' patron donates $18,000 to employees at Hearth Restaurant in Peoria Heights
PEORIA HEIGHTS – An act of generosity touched the lives of staff members at another local eatery.
Employees at Hearth Restaurant each received $1,000 from an anonymous donor. With 18 employees, the gift amounted to $18,000.
“You hear about stories like that – like people getting gifted things like that, and donations and the community reaching out and helping like that – but you never think it's going to happen to you,” said Aubriana Garcia, a part-time waitress who has worked at Hearth for 4 years.
The act of kindness comes less than two months after a longtime customer at Schooners in Peoria Heights gifted $1,000 to each of the business’s 30 employees.
Soon after, Hearth owner Hugh Higgins said a patron approached him about making a similar donation. He said the donor – who remains unknown to employees – first wanted to find the best way to make such a gift.
After weeks of planning and preparation, Higgins had the donations in hand. The patron addressed cashier’s checks to each employee and included “a gift in gratitude” in the memo.
Higgins said he initially planned to announce the donation on a Saturday, which is when the most employees are typically at the restaurant.
“But I just couldn't keep it inside anymore. It was killing me, you know,” Higgins said. “I wanted so much to see these reactions and to see these faces and it's like, ‘Tomorrow – we’re doing this tomorrow.’”
So, Higgins scheduled a mandatory staff meeting to deliver the news.
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Garcia expected to attend a regular meeting to discuss the menu or something happening at the restaurant. She said learning about the donation was a “very shocking” experience – one which has yet to fully sink in.
Discovering how much time the patron spent preparing the gift only added to Garcia’s surprise.
“That's a lot of dedication for somebody to say, ‘Oh, we're thinking about it.’ But now we're going to spend an entire month making sure it goes all the way through and planning it to the end,” Garcia said. “And still with no recognition.”
For Garcia, the $1,000 will provide an extra boost to her savings as she prepares to welcome a baby later this year. The donation will also offer a bit of financial support to a staff member who is in the process of purchasing her first home, according to Higgins.
Garcia said for some colleagues, the money helped them get through the week. One new employee, Higgins said, encountered troubles with his car and had been relying on his parents’ car to get to work.
“It would have taken him weeks to save enough money to fix his car,” Higgins said. “And that kid dropped his head in his hands and cried. He just couldn’t believe it.”
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Higgins said he knew the donor was a generous individual. Even so, he said he was struck by the customer’s dedication to supporting all the restaurant’s employees equally – from longtime staff members to those who had only started weeks before.
Not everyone has the means to make such a donation, of course, but Garcia hopes the gift inspires others to think about those around them and find ways to make a positive impact.
“It doesn’t have to be like something big,” Garcia said. “It could just be something small like being nice to people.”
For Higgins, kind deeds like this highlight the fact that “central Illinois is a generous community.” And while the donor at Hearth is not seeking recognition, Higgins said the patron would like to see these acts of kindness continue.
“This wonderful patron, you know, it's their goal that somebody else picks up the ball and does it for somebody else,” Higgins said. “That's their greatest hope.”
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This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Peoria Heights restaurant employees receive $1,000 each from customer
