For those who do their shopping at the Harris Teeter in Glenwood Village, Illinois, Tim the bagger is a very familiar face.
Tim has been working at the local Teeter for more than two decades and he has bonded with the customers there, becoming their friend eventually.
Always with a smile on his face, willing to help anyone who needed help around the grocery store, he is the person that made the customers’ day for 23 years straight.
“Tim shows up. He shows up when the CAT bus is running late. He shows up in the rain, the snow and the heat. He shows up with a positive attitude and a warm smile every day,” Julie Caviness, a regular Teeter’s customer, explained.
In fact, Caviness had found a friend in Tim. As she told WRAL, he used to be something like a therapist for her.
They have shared their stories, and their worries, they have prayed for each other’s families, and they have even cried together at some point.
So, when Tim told Julie that he would be leaving the store, she was shocked.
“I started crying,” she recalled. “I was like ‘you can’t leave me.’”
But deep inside, she knew that leaving was the right choice for Tim.
You see, working at Glenwood Village meant that he’d commute 45 minutes to and from work, while the job he was offered at the Wilson Teeter was only nine minutes from home.
So, instead of being sad about losing her friend, Caviness decided to celebrate his amazing work over the last couple of decades, and surprise him during his last day of work.
She started a GoFundMe and shared Tim’s story and why he was a legend to her and many other customers.
She set the goal at $1,000, while she also asked local residents to show up after Tim’s last shift to surprise him with balloons, notes, or just “giant hugs”.
The woman could not believe it when she realized that the $1k goal was reached within the first hour, and donations just kept coming.
By the end of the day they had reached $22,000- today it’s more than $30k.
When Tim finished his last shift at little Teeter, customers who appreciated his hard work and positive attitude surprised him at the store’s parking lot.
They carried notes with them, they had balloons for him, and they cheered as he was exiting the store.
Tim was overcome by emotion. He started crying as Julie approached him to reveal the biggest surprise.
She showed him how much money they had raised for him until then and the man just broke out into tears.
“I mean- it will help me a whole lot. I’m blessed with it, you know,” the man told the local news outlet.
As Caviness wrote in a follow-up message on GoFundMe, this surprise was “one of the most beautiful experiences” in her life.
What a generous and appreciative community.