LINCOLN, Neb. (NBC) — Abigail Sailors was a student at Trinity College but she had to drop out to work as a waitress so she could afford school.
In one night that all changed for Sailors after she got a big tip from a couple she was serving.
Sailors said the customers started making small talk with her but something was a little bit different.
"They said ’The host told us you are the happiest server, so there must be something behind this,’ and I just kind of laughed at them. They said 'Do you have perfect parents, do have a perfect life?' And I said ‘something like that, but you got it a little wrong,’" Sailors recalled.
The waitress opened up to the two men about her life. Her mother had suffered a brain injury in a car crash when Abigail was just an infant and her father had been abusive to her and her siblings.
"When I was seven months old, my parents were in a car accident, my mom has a brain injury and she never really recovered from that," Sailors said.
Sailors was in several foster homes before finding a loving family in High School.
Her story brought the men to tears, especially because of her positive outlook on life.
"I have faith that it will all work out, and it is all in God's plans,” she said.
When sailors returned with their check at the end of the meal the men had written two checks for her; one for $5,000 so she could return to college and one for $1,000 just for her. They also left a $100 tip for her to split with another server.
"I tried to thank them and they just said ‘thank God, not us, it's all him,’” she said.
Sailors said goodbye to her coworkers shortly after and this spring she is returning to Trinity College.
"For someone just to believe in you like that, it gives you that unreal feeling,” she said.
The money will allow Sailors to get through her sophomore year and by then she hopes to have saved enough money to pay for her final two years.