Kansas City restaurant rewards waitress for her honesty

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A cash-strapped waitress at a suburban Applebee's restaurant has been rewarded many times over for turning in $3,300 that a customer left behind.

Heidi Tomassi, 22, had plenty of uses for the money. She and her husband were heavily in debt after taking off work and traveling to see a specialist who could treat their infant son's heart condition.

But the waitress' honesty paid off. Applebee's International Inc. announced Friday it was putting $25,000 into a new employee assistance fund named after Tomassi and presented her a check for $4,260. The money came from restaurant vendors and employees from her restaurant in Olathe, Kan., and the chain's corporate headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.

Applebee's also promised to make up the difference between whatever donations Tomassi receives and the $25,000 a man promised to give her from casino winnings. That promised money never arrived.

Besides the money she received Friday, well-wishers had already given Tomassi nearly $10,000, along with toys for her son and 2-year-old daughter.

'Hope and integrity'

The response to her story came as no surprise to Lloyd Hill, chairman and chief executive officer of Applebee's.

"I think we are thirsty and hungry for a story like this," said Hill, who presented the check to Tomassi. "It's a story of hope and integrity. I think it gives all of us more faith and hope for mankind."

Tomassi remembers coming home from her fifth day of work at Applebee's and telling her husband, Joe, she had found an envelope filled with 33 $100 bills. She gave the envelope to her manager, but wondered what would happen if the money went unclaimed.

"I said, 'God, why did you put this in my hands?"' Tomassi said. "I think every day since he's showed me. 'I wanted to test you and you passed the test, and I wanted to take care of you guys.'"

A Sedalia man claimed the $3,300 the next day and rewarded Tomassi with $100. He had sold a car to have money for Christmas presents.

That event marked a change of luck for the family.

Tomassi's son, Griffin, was full term when he was born in July but the veins in his heart were too small and weren't connected properly.

The defect required surgery the next day. The couple brought Griffin home after he spent a month in the hospital.

Two weeks later, Griffin went back to the hospital, where a procedure failed to correct the defect. Doctors gave Griffin about six weeks to live. Joe Tomassi then lost his job after asking for time off to spend with his family.

The couple then found a surgeon at Stanford University in California who patched skin into the boy's tiny veins to make them bigger and increase blood flow. Though it will be several months before the family learns whether the veins are growing along with their son, doctors' reports have been promising.

They plan to use the donations to buy Christmas gifts and pay off their bills and loans from family.