A relative of the restaurant's owner said the Vietnamese restaurant had been the frequent target of vandals who smashed the storefront windows.
The customer ordered vegetable curry, cassava fries and a soup of tofu and vegetables. The bill came to $34.64, including tax.
For that meal, at a California Vietnamese restaurant repeatedly targeted by vandals who smashed the glass storefront, the patron left a $500 tip, drawing a heart on the receipt and writing, "to help with the broken window."
That monumental monetary act of random kindness struck the heart of the owner's niece, who took to Twitter and posted a photo of the receipt.
“Recently, my uncle’s restaurant has been victim to a string of vandalism. Every time he fixes the window, it’s only a matter of days before it’s broken again,” wrote user CaroWyn. “A few nights ago a patron left this note. Faith in humanity restored.”
The popular Sacramento eatery Tây Giang opened in 2015 in the city's Little Saigon district.
But like other areas across the country, Sacramento has seen a surge in Asian discrimination, with police reporting a more than 50% increase in cases from 2017 to 2020, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Fueled by false information about the coronavirus, Asian hate crimes rose by as much as 169% in the first quarter of 2021, according to police data from 15 major cities compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
“We already have more hate crimes in the first quarter of 2021 in these cities than in all of pre-pandemic 2019. And in some, more than all of 2020,” said director Brian Levin last week, when the data was released.
