The Incredible Story Behind One Man's 7,000-Percent Tip for Waitress: LI Patch Best of 2015

This story was published in April 2015. 

His wife and children already asleep, Richard Specht was lying on the couch of his Sound Beach home Wednesday night, about ready to turn in himself, when he opened the email.

A night earlier, a waitress had emailed Specht and told him that she had a picture of something that was really incredible, but she wasn’t sure if she should send it. Specht emailed her back and told her that he couldn’t offer his opinion since he didn’t know what she was referencing.

On Wednesday night, he found out. The waitress sent the photo. It shows a recent receipt from the restaurant where the waitress works. The total on the bill before tip: $43.50. The total after: $3,043.50.

A man the waitress knew and who she had supported through his life’s endeavors left her a 6,897 percent tip. Next to the receipt is a note the man wrote to the waitress explaining why he left the $3,000 tip.

The note begins: “Thank you for your kindness and humility. My teacher in middle school had such a difficult experience a few years ago which has sparked me to do this.”

That teacher was Richard Specht. Richard and Samantha Specht went through the unthinkable in 2012. Their 22-month-old son Richard Edwin-Ehmer Specht drowned in a pond in the family’s backyard just days before Hurricane Sandy.

Since then, the Spechts have made it their mission, through their foundation ReesSpecht Life, to inspire people to pay kindness forward in memory of their son, who was affectionately known as “Rees” for his initials.

Richard Specht wrote a children’s book, “A Little Rees Specht Cultivates Kindness,” last year. It tells the story of a young farmer named Little Rees Specht who discovers that kindness, like a seed, will only grow and spread if one takes the time to cultivate it.

That email. That receipt, though. That was not something Richard Specht was ever expecting.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Specht said of when he first opened the email. “I started crying. There are pictures of my son everywhere and I was just looking at them saying ’I can’t believe this is something that you helped to inspire.”

Specht’s former student who left the tip did leave a few requirements for the waitress who accepted it:

1. Go to reesspechtlife.com and learn!
2. Don’t let pay it forward end with you.
3. Since it is about the idea and not about you, or me, if you decide to share this, please don’t use either of our names!

The note ends: “Thanks for always being around for all of my shows off and on broadway. I hope that one day someone gives as much love and happiness into the world as you do.”

ReesSpecht Life was sprung out of the generosity the Spechts’ North Shore community showed them following their son’s death.

“Nobody would let us do anything to repay them back, so we figured, well, if you’re not going to accept us, then we’re going to do something for somebody else,” Samantha Specht told CBS 2 in 2013.

Richard and Samantha Specht are both teachers in the Smithtown School District. Richard Specht teaches at Great Hollow Middle School, which is where he taught his big-tipping former student.

“He was a super nice young man,” Richard Specht said. “He was one of those kids who would come up to my room and talk with me.”

The former student is “definitely the type of person you would expect to do something like that,” Specht said of the kind-hearted tip, before chuckling and remembering just how unexpected and monumental the gesture actually was.

“I get excited when I hear people are paying for somebody’s coffee at the drive-through,” he said.

Specht has seen that occasional viral story of a massive tip being given to a deserving waitress and thought it would be “really cool” if someone ever did it in the spirit of Rees, who always wanted to make others happy.

“But,” he said, “I never thought somebody would.”

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