Tips For Jesus Patron Leaves $7,000 Gratuity, Waiter Throws It Away By Accident

The Tips for Jesus mystery patron left a monster tip for one California waiter, but the unsuspecting restaurant employee threw away the multi-thousand dollar tip thinking it was a mistake.

The waiter, 67-year-old Ron Kinney, was working at the French Quarter Restaurant in West Hollywood, California, when he was graced by the Tips for Jesus patron. The mystery diner has been traveling around California leaving massive tips for unsuspecting waiters and waitresses, but Kinney thought the enormous gratuity he received in December couldn’t have been real.

The bill for the meal came to less than $50 and the Tips for Jesus diner left a tip for 7,000, but Kinney thought it was fake and discarded it. By the time he recognized the signature and realized it was real, the receipt was gone.

“I was pretty naive,” Kinney told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I thought it was someone who had a drink too many and didn’t realize what they were doing.

“We see this all the time,” he added. “People make mistakes.”

But Kinney still has hopes the Tips for Jesus diner can make things right. He reached out to the Chronicle, which has written about the many appearances of the generous diner in California, in the hopes of getting a second coming

“The money would sure have come in handy for me to help for retirement,” Kinney said. “We have no such plan at work.”

The Tips for Jesus diner has become a viral sensation, with a Instagram page chronicling the many life-changing tips he has left.

Like Kinney, many of the waiters and waitresses couldn’t believe someone would purposely leave a tip that large.

“I was actually at the table telling them he had paid for their meal. And I peripherally opened up the credit card holder, looked down at it and my jaw just dropped,” waitress Hilary Hesse of Roka Akor recalled. “And they said, ‘Did he take good care of you?’ And I said, ‘uh huh.’ First, I think that he doesn’t know how to use the decimal point and that it was actually $30. And then I looked closer and…Oh, my God…”

While the Tips for Jesus patron has not come forward publicly, several reports say that it is former PayPal vice president and multi-millionaire Jack Selby.