Starbucks Barista Saw a Stranger Approaching a Teenage Girl. What She Did Next Won the Internet

The harsh reality of society is that women often face uncomfortable encounters in public despite all the work done towards gender equality. But in such situations, women are also coming forward to stand up for other women in order to make them feel safer. One such woman is a barista working at a Starbucks joint in Texas, who noticed an 18-year-old customer who was getting visibly uncomfortable as an unknown man approached her. Worried about that teen's safety, the female barista went over to give the high-school senior her cup of coffee that had a special message written on it, per the New York Post.

The message on the cup read: "Are you okay? Do you want us to intervene? If you do, take the lid off the cup.”

The teen's mom, Brandy Selim Roberson told the news outlet that her daughter was studying by herself at the Starbucks joint when a "loud and animated" man she didn't know approached her. In a now-deleted post on Roberson's Facebook page, she shared how the stranger came up to her teen daughter and started talking to her.

"A barista handed her ‘an extra hot chocolate someone forgot to pick up,'" she wrote in the viral post, per the outlet. The mother went on to add, “How grateful I am for people who look out for other people! Side note: She felt safe and did not remove the lid but let them know. She said the whole team was watching over her the rest of the time she was there. This reaffirms my faith in humanity. Maybe just seeing this story, others if allowed to say something or turn away, would say something."

In a similar incident, another Starbucks barista became a guardian angel to a customer. Nicole McNeill was working in a Starbucks located in Washington when she encountered a regular customer named Vince Villano. According to KIRO-TV, 41-year-old Villano was an army veteran who was looking visibly upset when he entered the Starbucks that day. After McNeill struck up a conversation with him she found out that Villano was suffering from a polycystic kidney disease and he needs a kidney transplant. “I’ve never really wanted to be the guy that’s like, ‘Hey, I need a kidney,’” Villano explained in an Instagram video shared by Starbucks.

However, Villano needed help and he was just days away from being placed on dialysis. McNeil went home after that interaction with the army vet and told her husband about it. “The very first thing Justin said was, ‘I have a kidney,’” McNeil recalled, adding that her husband, who is also a veteran, didn’t need to know anything else about Villano when he decided to offer one of his kidneys. “God puts a lot of people in different places and everyone has the capacity to give something,” Justin told KIRO after learning that his kidney was a match for Villano. The transplant proved to be successful and it brought the McNeill and Villano families together to forge an unbreakable bond.