Local News

18-Year-Old Waitress Receives Tip of a Lifetime from Lone Texas Man

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Tony Maples Photography

 

Alesha Palmer thought it was a regular shift at Vetoni’s Italian Restaurant until she picked up the check from a man dining alone and got the tip of a lifetime.

In Gun Barrel City, Texas, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas, Alesha Palmer works at Vetoni’s Italian Restaurant as a way to save up money for college. She was serving “a couple she knew last weekend,” as reported by KLTV, when they were curious about her plans for college. She told them she worked about 30 hours a week to save up funds even though her parents are helping her pay for college.

Her conversation was overheard by a man dining alone. Palmer noticed the man speaking with her manager and feared the worst, thinking she had done something incredibly wrong. However, what she found was incredibly right, instead.

 

The man, who remains anonymous, left her a $1,000 tip. She told KLTV that her manager “turned over the receipt and I kind of just stood there wide eyed and I just started crying and I’m in the middle of the restaurant.”

Palmer is attending TJC after graduation this spring and has plans to eventually open her own pastry shop after earning a degree in business and culinary arts.