$500 Tips: Man Brings Joy to Servers After Brother's Last Wish

A man traveling around the country giving out $500 tips to unsuspecting wait staff made another server extremely happy last week. Seth Collins is fulfilling the last request of his brother, who died last year.

ABC News reported Collins and his parents set out a year ago to leave a $500 tip for a pizza, as instructed by Seth’s younger brother, Aaron Collins, who died from unknown causes. A video of that first tip went viral and the family set up a website, aaroncollins.org, where donations have continued to pour in, leading to more $500 tips.

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The family has raised more than $60,000 and Seth has a goal of leaving a $500 tip in every state, ABC said. The most recent tip went to Beth Foster, working at Thre3e Wise Men Brewing Co. in Indianapolis. Indiana was the 17th state on the family’s journey.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time in my life,” Foster told ABC News’ Indianapolis affiliate WRTV. “I’m a teacher just looking for a job and it’s kind of hard right now.”

Videos of the Collins family handing over the surprisingly large tips to wait staff, so far mostly in the Eastern United States, are on the Aaron Collins website. Titling the site “Aaron’s Last Wish,” the family maintains a map showing where they’ve donated the tips.

In an “About Aaron” section, the family wrote, “Aaron lived his life quickly, not holding on to many things and always with a vigor to have experiences not possessions. He was incredibly sentimental, though he always tried to hide it. The small things people did for him are what touched him the most.”

The family found Aaron’s will after he died and it told them to go out and leave a good tip, USA Today reported. It said, “I'm not talking about 25%. I mean, $500 for pizza.”

Aaron’s mother, Tina Rae Collins, wrote a book about the family’s experiences as they went out to do as Aaron instructed. The book, “Aaron Collins Did That,” is available on Amazon.

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