El Charro Cafe

At some point in our lives, we do something against our better judgement. For the majority of us, we live and learn, but for one former employee of a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona - she couldn't forget. “It’s been 20 years, but I still carry great remorse,” read an anonymous letter sent to the El Charro Café. In July 2018, Carlotta Flores, owner and chef at El Charro Café, and her family received a handwritten letter from one of their former employees. “Friday night I received a call from one of my sons and he says, ‘Mom you have to come downtown, you have an envelope here and I’ve gone ahead and opened it and you’re going to be greatly surprised.'” In the letter, the woman stated that she had worked at the restaurant “very briefly” in the 1990s, and during her time as a waitress she did something she wasn’t proud of. “One of the waiters I worked with had encouraged me to ‘forget’ to ring in a few drinks a shift and pocket the cash,” the letter read. “And for some stupid reason, I did it. I grew up in the church, I knew better. I hadn’t stolen a dime before then, nor have I since.” As if receiving the handwritten apology wasn’t surprising enough, inside the envelope was $1,000 to compensate for the money the former waitress stole decades ago. The gesture helped restore Flores’s faith in humanity—her purse had recently been stolen. “I don’t know where she’s at or who she is but I will tell you one thing. "I hope that she’s read or has seen what an impact this has made not only on me, my family, "my business, but where it will go in the future so I hope she keeps looking to see what we’re doing with it,” the restaurant owner said. As for the money, the family plans to use it to pay it forward.