She wanted to help waiters during restaurant shutdown. Scammers had other ideas.
This column started out as a heartwarming holiday tale, full of selflessness and charity in the face of a pandemic as Christmas draws nearer.
Then it turned into more of a morality tale about how no good deed goes unpunished, at least not in the cutthroat world of social media and philanthropy.
It starts shortly after our most recent COVID-19 shutdown when a mom named Sarci Eldridge started thinking about her favorite server at Chuys, a woman named Jessica Carey, who always waited on Eldridge and her family when they went to the location off Nicholasville Road.
Eldridge knew that Carey was a single mom of Dain, 11, whose dad had died three years ago. Carey had already been on unemployment in the spring, and was now facing fewer shifts with takeout only tips. It seemed terrible that the shutdown would make Christmas so difficult for the two of them. So Eldridge asked Carey to send her an Amazon wishlist for Dain’s Christmas presents. And then she posted about it on Facebook, encouraging others to do the same. So, she thought, why not make it available to everyone? And so, Adopt a Server Kentucky was born, allowing out of work and struggling servers to post an Amazon wish list and get “adopted” by willing donors.
Within a week there were 3,000 members. The stories were, in short, heartbreaking. Moms and dads who couldn’t afford to pay rent and for Christmas presents; pleas for dog food to feed a beloved pet, or people paying it forward because they’d been in the same spot before.
There were messages like Katelyn, on her own after six years in foster care with an apartment and a job at Steak N’ Shake shut down for the second time. She’s hearing-impaired, she said, and got in a wreck on Thanksgiving Day, leaving her on crutches. Her wishlist included hearing aid batteries.
“Anything helps,” she wrote. “Thank you in advance.”
“It’s been really beautiful to watch people pour out love on these people,” Eldridge said on Monday. About 4,000 had joined the group.
Then on Tuesday, Eldridge shut it down. She and the other administrators had verified reports of people being adopted, then taking down their post, and then reposting in order to get more stuff.
“It grew too fast,” Eldridge said. Now, she and her other administrator will keep a database of names who join.
She hopes to have the site back up by Wednesday.
On the micro level, the scammers provided a lot more work for Eldridge. On the macro level, the sheer breadth of servers and their need in a crisis like COVID-19 shows once again the frailties of an economy that depends on poorly paid service workers who live on a razor’s edge, without safety nets to catch them when the smallest and biggest things go awry. In better times, we happily go out to dinner without worrying much over whether the people who wait on us are paid a living wage or get health insurance or have enough saved for an emergency. In better times, we should make sure safety nets are in place.
In response to the new shutdown, Gov. Andy Beshear set up a $40 million fund for restaurant and bar owners. On Tuesday, Beshear said 2,650 restaurants and bars have already applied for a total of almost $26 million in relief, and the state has already distributed $1.7 million.
The scammers have not dissuaded Eldridge. “There’s always somebody out there to take advantage, and I knew going in something like this could happen,” she said on Tuesday. “This group matters and I want to make it work.”
And the first adoptee, Jessica Carey is glad about that.
“When something like this happens there really is no safety net for any of us,” Carey said. “It’s the whole uncertainty of it all — will I be able to pay my bills or pay my rent? Not knowing is super, super scary.
“I’ve known her (Eldridge) for seven years, she knows everything I’ve gone through, but I had no idea it was going to take off and help so many other people.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 2:28 PM.
