Kyle Oreffice and BYU student Josh Gibson have gone from tipping waitresses, handing out cash to the homeless and paying for strangers' meals at a drive-through to their latest act of kindness: leaving a $500 tip for a hotel cleaner.
It all took place in Park City, Utah, when Oreffice and Gibson, who run the YouTube channel Give Back Films, found a small hotel and decided to give back to a hard worker.
After talking with a fellow employee at the hotel, they became aware that the woman had just recently been hired and was in need of some extra money. So Give Back Films got to work, leaving $500 under the sheets of a bed, placing cameras around the hotel room and waiting for the employee's arrival.
When she entered the room, the woman began to clean until she lifted up the bed sheets and placed her hand over her mouth. The video shows her stand in silence for several seconds. It's not until she sees Oreffice and Gibson outside the room that she begins to speak.
"I cannot accept this. You have to take it back," she said.
But the woman is told to keep the money and that she deserves it.
Oreffice and Gibson started their channel "Give Back Films" this past November to encourage others to give service and help each other out.
"I think that's our underlying goal in this channel is to be able to have people not only read about kind acts, but I think it's fun to be able to go to a YouTube channel and see something happening that's good, so then it makes you feel good and it makes you feel happy. And then it will hopefully influence you to go out and do the same thing," Gibson told the Deseret News.
Although their channel is fairly new, it already has more than 250,000 subscribers and more than 9 million video views.
"I think there's something really cool about someone being genuinely happy, and it's exciting. It feels good," Gibson said. "Through watching the video, you can vicariously feel what it's like to give to other people, and you experience a little bit of that happiness when watching the video — or hopefully, at least."
Email: spetersen@deseretnews.com