Waitress Candy (Shanks) Christiansen was left speechless.

As she started to clear the table after serving breakfast to a group of eight Tuesday morning, Dec. 10 at Pepe’s Mexican Restaurant in Powell, she couldn’t believe her eyes.  She had just exchanged Christmas greetings with the group’s host, who stepped away, saying, “Your tip is on the table.”

Sitting there was a pile of cash totaling $700.

“All I could say was ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God,’” Christiansen recounted later. “I took it back to show Priscilla [Pepe’s co-owner Priscilla Stringari]. They left me this much. I couldn’t believe it.”

The act of Christmas kindness took root from a Facebook post which caught the eye of Bobbie Colvin, the records/communication supervisor at the Powell Police Department. She saw a report of a group of women who get together every year during the holidays to perform a random act of kindness.

Colvin “liked” the post, along with others. In response, she put out a message seeking people who would like to join in helping someone who wasn’t asking for help.  That led to the breakfast gathering at Pepe’s, bringing together a group of people, not all of whom even knew each other.

“Candy’s been a hard worker all her life,” Colvin said. “She has a disabled son at home, but she goes down there [to Pepe’s] every day with a smile on her face.”

The unexpected gift is going to help out at Christmas, Christiansen said. It will help her provide for her son, Tyler, 25.

“I’m going to buy a bigger ramp at my house for his wheelchair,” she said.

The $700 has already grown, Colvin said last week, with additional money that has been contributed since the breakfast get-together.