It had been a normal Sunday night for Dawn Ward, a waitress at the Olive Garden restaurant in Lubbock, Texas. Then, a married couple were seated and Ward thought they deserved ultra-generous care. They said they had a special event happening and they wanted to spend it here at Olive Garden, Ward said. And so I inquired what it was and they said that he was going to be deployed the next morning.
The single mother of three has worked at Uncle Tony's Pizza in Cranston, Rhode Island for the last 15 years. She has regular customers that leave her good tips, but never like the cash she got from a couple last month to whom she served pizza.
A tiny farming town in Michigan is rallying around a 16-year-old girl who became humiliated when her high school voted to elevate her to the homecoming court as a joke and then laughed at her in the hallways for having so few friends. In an inspiring turnaround, Whitney Kropp's embarrassment gained her thousands of friends.
At her Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005, Kamael Sugrim listened intently to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. A year after he was first diagnosed with cancer, Jobs told the graduates that time is limited, so have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Sugrim, a business grad, had her future life of prosperity assured, but Jobs' words never left her. She took them to heart and changed her life.
A big tipper is spreading wealth and joy in the city of Madison. A customer at Vasillio's Greek restaurant left a $1,000.00 tip on just a $31.94 bill.
Star Wars director George Lucas will donate the $4.05 Billion he will receive from the sale of Lucasfilm Ltd. to Disney to a foundation focused on education.
Officers in Oregon didn't just ignore the children after a father was arrested on drug charges before Christmas. This is what kindness looks like.
A Saudi prince worth $32 Billion is the latest of the super-wealthy to declare he will donate his fortune toward helping others.
Americans gave $358 billion dollars to charity in the last year, breaking the record for most donated in one year.
Four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon just returned from a week-long trip in Africa working with the Rethink Refugees foundation to find better ways to help people in Congo. Gordon is no stranger to charity work. He is involved in hunger campaigns in the US, and his foundation funds pediatric cancer and his own children's hospital, and has in six years exceeded $1 million in annual contributions.
A Florida attorney who helps families fight foreclosure, wants to help a family in a major way this holiday season. Mark Stopa plans to give away a home to a family in need.
When a Nevada graphics manager saw a Good News Network post in November about a woman in Canada who runs a shoebox project for women in shelters, something in the article stuck with her. For a month she said, I kept reading it and thought, 'Maybe I could do something similar.' She decided to fill up as many shoeboxes for the homeless as she could -- with a goal of filling 50 boxes for Christmas.
Benjamin Olewine is a regular at the Peachtree restaurant where Melissa Mainier of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania worked. Melissa knew she wanted to be a nurse and was wracking up a lot of debt to put herself through school. One day he told Melissa that he wanted to pay her tuition -- and has done so now for years.
Lisa Klein was named Oakland's Mother of the Year for her almost decade-long work collecting gently used baby clothes for low-income or homeless families.
Over the last year Althea Guiboche has run out of money and run out of baking supplies, but she has never stopped giving away free bread and soup to the city's homeless every week. The aboriginal mother of seven was even forced by the province to become trained in food-handling if she wanted to continue, but now she has an official certificate and she cooks inside a commercial kitchen at the community center -- all toward the goal of becoming more compassionate and giving.
It was in 1984 that John Jacko Garrett, age 70, first began donating a portion of his harvest each year to charity. Today, the second-generation rice farmer from Danbury, a tiny farm town of 1,700 southeast of Houston, is a legend. He's a legend thanks to the almost six million pounds of rice he's donated to the Houston Foodbank, and the millions upon millions of free meals created from that rice.
While most of us want the nicest clothes or the biggest TV for the holidays, there are a lot of people who just need the basics like food and clothing. So, instead of shopping for people who already have a lot... the anonymous man decided to spend his money shopping for people who don't have much at all.
A 19-year-old Dairy Queen employee served more than ice cream at his Hopkins, Minnesota store recently: He stood up for a blind man after his twenty dollar bill, dropped on the ground, was scooped up by a sighted customer who refused to give it back. A typed letter of commendation now hangs on the wall of the DQ shop after a third customer saw the whole scene unfold and couldn't believe how manager Joey Prusak had handled the situation - going above and beyond what anyone could expect.
The bill was $27.75, her reward for paying it was far greater. Sarah Hoidahl, a New Hampshire waitress, even though she is a single mom living on tips, bought lunch for two National Guard service members who were furloughed recently in the government shutdown. The Guardswomen posted the kind note they received from Sarah on Facebook from which thousands of people were inspired -- including the Ellen Show producers.
While some of his peers have shunned Wall Street as the land of the morally bankrupt, Jason Trigg's moral code steered him there. He is after money — as much as he can earn, so he can give half of it away.
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