Waitress Who Pays Firefighters’ Tab Gets Special Surprise
With diner food and a fire in their bellies, two firefighters breathe new life into a local father.
By Kerri Adams, HeroFuel® Reporter
A day in a life of a firefighter goes a little something like this.
They race past traffic in a whip-lashed red streak, navigating hairpin turns and tight lanes with a precision unbecoming of a tank-like vehicle of its girth and length. Their destination: a building engulfed in flames.
Most would gawk in stunned horror from afar or want to turn away from the sight of a burning building, but this is the firefighter’s office.
Instead of taking a seat at a desk and turning on a computer, they immediately dive into the flame infested building to investigate, protect property and save lives.
This is all in a day’s work for these everyday heroes.
After one such overnight shift, firefighters Tim Young and Paul Hulling visited a New Jersey diner. Seeking to refuel, fresh off a heated battle 12 hours long to get a massive warehouse fire under control in North Brunswick, they ate while recapping their day.
Their waitress, Liz Woodward overheard them talking about the incident and was inspired to thank them for their service. So, instead of a bill, she wrote a kind note to let them know she would be covering their lunch.
“Thank you all that you do, for serving us and for running into the places everyone runs away from. No matter your role, you are courageous, brave and strong,” wrote Woodward in the note. “Thank you for being bold and badass every day. Fueled by fire and driven by courage — what an example you are. Get some rest!”
The firefighters were so touched, that Young shared a photo of her note on Facebook. The post quickly went viral and got thousands of “likes.”
“I started tearing up and it made me feel good — us firefighters are wanted, people care about us,” said Hulling about the note to ABC 6.
But their story didn’t end there.
The firefighters later learned of an opportunity to return the kindness. Young included a link to a GoFundMe page for Woodward’s dad Steve, who became a quadriplegic after a brain aneurysm in 2010 and was in need of a wheelchair-accessible van.
“A wheelchair accessible van would change my father’s life. It would change everything. As of right now, he will more than likely never walk again (but nothing is impossible!) and he has an extremely limited range of motion. He is entirely dependent on a caregiver and cannot feed, bathe, or change himself. He has had to re-learn how to swallow, how to speak and communicate — even how to process thoughts and think,” according to the GoFundMe page.
With the help of Young’s social post, the page raised five times its 17K goal.
“We’re not just firefighters, we’re also caring people, we want to be part of everybody’s life,” said Hullings to WPVI.
“All I did was pay for their breakfast, and I didn’t think anything would come about it except they would leave with a smile,” said Woodward to WPVI. “The message is to be kind to each other, to pay it forward when you can, that even the smallest gestures can change somebody’s life.”
The firefighter’s post helped the Woodward family in ways they never could have even imagined.
This moving story, even caught the attention of Ellen Degeneres, who invited Woodward and the firefighting heroes to appear on her show.
Who knows how many viewers were likewise inspired to perpetrate acts of gratitude and kindness as a result.
The ripple current of a simple spur of the moment act of gratitude created a wave of momentum the Woodward Strong campaign needed. Hearts opened, lives were changed.
The moral of this true story is that good things happen to those who help others. The more we give, the richer we become.
