Meet Dalene Bowden, a lunch lady who lives in Pocatello, Idaho.
Well, she was a lunch lady up until last week, where she worked at Irving Middle School cafeteria.
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Last week a 12-year-old girl told Bowden she was hungry but didn’t have any money to buy food. So Bowden did what most people would do: she handed the child a meal and said she’s talk to her about it later. After all, she had an entire school to feed that lunchtime.
Unfortunately for Bowden, her supervisor saw her give the child a free lunch, worth $1.70, and immediately reported her.
Despite offering to pay for the lunch herself, she was put on leave.
A few days later she received a letter from the local school district informing her she had been fired for “theft/stealing school district… property, and inaccurate, transactions when ordering, receiving, and serving food.”
Bowden was shocked.
“I broke the rules, but I offered to pay for the meal and I don’t think I deserved to lose my job over it,” Bowden told the Idaho State Journal.
Rightly outraged, over 80,000 people have since signed an online petitioncalling on the local school board to rehire Bowden.
And with the help of donations to her GoFundMe page, Bowden has been able to hire an attorney to fight her case.
Thankfully, the campaign has caught the attention of Mayor Brian Blad, who is now trying to arrange a meeting with the local superintendent to discuss how the “extremely unfortunate situation” is impacting the community, according to the city’s Facebook page.
