BROWNSVILLE, Texas...For nearly seven years Melina Salazar did her best to put on a smile and tend to the every need of her most loyal and cantankerous customer.

She made sure his food was as hot as he wanted, even if it meant he burned his mouth. And she smiled through his demands and curses. The 89-year old Walter "Buck" Swords obviously appreciated it, leaving the waitress $50,000.00 and a 2000 Buick when he died.

"I still can't believe it", the Luby's cafeteria employee told Harlingen television station KGBT-TV in an interview during which she described Swords as "kind of mean".

Swords a World War ll veteran, died in July. But Salazar learned just a few days before Christmas that he had left her the money and car...


CNN.com


If he was that mean, she was probably the only one who was nice to him and it paid off....I bet the car is in "mint" condition too.

There are people like that.


They will treat you like scum yet in reality they actually like you they just for some strange reason do not wish to show they have a nice side.

Because she was the one who could put up with his foul mouth.

To her, she was just doing her job. To him, somebody that would just take his cr*p.

Still don't make him a decent man.

An a-hole who left some money is still an a-hole...

I disagree.

If some gives you tons of money they automatically become your lord and saviour.

I'll join any cult that gives me 50 grand or more.

You mercenary!

Dang. Who knew. Sometimes being nice to mean people. Does pay off. I've exprienced that too.

Wow. Kinda makes me wanna be extra nice to people.....back when I worked dealing with lotto and scratch-offs I had some mean guys come in. They were regulars so I always knew what they played, and one time a guy hit for 10,000 on a scratch off and gave me $500. I was shocked. He never came back for me to thank him...

I've had similar things happen to me

Gotta admire her patience.....many ppl wouldn't even put up with an unruly customer.

Yeah those damn world war 2 veterans, not being nice to people and what not

What are you implying? Could you clarify please?

Being a ww2 vet doesn't give someone a free pass to be a jerk.

cool. you'll never know when someone is going to repay you your kindness.

True, apparently this pass cost him 50 k and a Buick.

Besidies, she described him as being "kind of mean", I don't think he was quite in the same league as Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets .... which is what this article was trying to make him out to be, no one wants to read about a mildly grumpy man leaving a waitress money.

holy crap I live in brownsville texas!! i havent seen anything like this in the paper

I suppose you are right the headlines seem better when it is Foul-mouthed customer leaves waitress $50,000 instead of Slighty disgrunted man leaves waitress $50,000

In the 80's I worked for starbucks when they were still really a very small company (11 stores total) I had a customer, an old curmudgeon of a guy, that was so nasty every time he came in, twice a day. He'd yell at us for being slow, bring his drinks back, yell for not counting change back properly, all kinds of stuff.

Finally one day, I just looked at him in the eye and told him to stop being such a "poopy-head" that exact word. All the girls at the counter just started cracking up. Lo' and behold from that day forward, he was still a poopy-head, but he never complained again and would sit in the parking lot before he came in and make us a little oragami figures. After 5 years, we had literally hundreds of them hanging in our back room.

I have no idea if he's still alive, he certainly didn't leave us anything except some exceptional pear-apples he grew at his house, and the oragami... but sometimes old grumpy men are just looking for someone to be sweet to them.

Cults are paying 50,000 to new members?!?!? Where do I sign up?!

The point is it doesn't matter whether she made him a decent man or not, and who know's what led him to being this type of person...The waitress treated him with kindness and he repaid her when he died...That was the point...she treated him like a human being.........

i guess he grew cold in the years after the war and she helped him a lot.

Some people just seem mean and grumpy like an aunt i had, but she had a heart of gold under all that yelling and grumbling and she was always my favorite aunt! Mabey this waitress saw through all that bluster, and saw that he was all bluster too! In the end he appreciated it and thanked her the only way he knew how! And it always pays to be nice to everyone, even the grumble butts out there!