This ketchup thief may have gotten away with a crime, but karma still kicked in.
A thief swiped a bottle of ketchup from Perkins Restaurant & Bakery in New Jersey, but the person, so racked with guilt, went to Walmart, bought two 32-oz. bottles of Heinz Ketchup, and left them in a bag outside the restaurant with a letter.
“Dear Lacey Perkins,” the letter starts out.
“A few weeks ago, I had taken one of your ketchup bottles off the table because for some odd reason I thought it’d be ‘risky.’,” reads the letter.
The restaurant was not aware that a bottle of ketchup had been stolen, WABC reported. Nonetheless, the thief said he or she experienced a string of misfortune after her deed.
“Well, a few hours [after] I did it someone crashed into my car, and since then my karma, luck, and life have been [expletive]. I hope returning two new bottles will return some for me, and I can stop carrying around this guilt,” the letter continued.
“Again, I’m really sorry if I inconvenienced you the same way my life has been inconveniencing me. I’m sorry,” the person wrote.
The person then signed off on the letter “From, an awful person,” and included a little frowning face symbol.
The restaurant manager found the bag while she was closing, and showed it to the owner of the franchise location, Maria DiLeo, the next morning.
“I really felt bad,” DiLeo told CNN, referring to the unnamed thief with the pronoun “she.” “She’s got to be 17, 18, 19. I really did feel bad.”
DiLeo took a picture and posted it on her town’s public Facebook page “just to say, ‘You’re forgiven.'”
“I love this. And to the person who wrote the note, you’re not an awful person. You had a lapse in good judgment and made it right. If you were awful, it never would have affected you,” commented Donna Mclaughlin.
“Karma is a nasty [expletive]!!! And whether it’s something as small as taking a ketchup bottle or something way worse, she always finds us and makes us pay,” commented Jessica Hetrick.
“All of a sudden, I have a strong urge to return all the little forks I’ve stolen from Chinese Restaurants over the years,” commented Brandon Ebbs.
But apparently the thief still had some good karma left. DiLeo’s story got the attention of officials at Heinz who, in addition to granting the thief “good ketchup karma,” offered to help pay some of the car damages.
Reformed Ketchup Thief,
We get it, Heinz makes you do crazy things. In honor of your good Ketchup Karma, we’d love to help you with your car damages. DM us. We’ll keep your identity top secret.— Heinz Ketchup (@HeinzKetchup_US) August 7, 2019
The thief came forward privately, and now we can only assume the good karma has been restored.
DiLeo, for her part, said she never would’ve even noticed the missing bottle.
“I do believe in karma,” she said. “But not over a ketchup bottle.”
The CNN Wire and NTD reporter Colin Fredericson contributed to this article.
