Burrito Restaurant Owner Offers Job to Burglar

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Shop now for family favorites. And we continue with our American stories and now we have one of the co-owners of Diablos Southwest Grill here to share his story. Diablos was started by Carl Wallace and brothers Brandon and Brad Wall in Augusta Georgia. Here he is sharing his story of how this business got started and how they operate.

Luckily for me you know through life all of my success has come from challenges and what seems sometimes like really bad days actually set us up for the best days. My wife had lost her job with Verizon when they had bought out another company and and I had never cooked a day in my life so when she went back to work instead of working business hours she started working retail hours and then that led me to having to cook for myself because she wouldn't get home to nine or ten o'clock at night and then I realized I had a passion for cooking and so actually Diablos was was born out of loss of a job for her and then I wanted to create a chain not just do someone else's dreams I wanted to create my own dream. So we created Diablos and grew from one store in Augusta to we're fixing to open up our 15th store in about two months. So the day before Easter Sunday 3 30 4 o'clock in the morning we had a break in the individual smashed our front glass, gained entry into the restaurant and then we went to the restaurant ran to the restaurant and then went to the register immediately grabbed the register shook it around snatched all the cords and wires it made an absolute mess of all the the register and the change drawer shook it around realized there was no money in there threw it to the ground looked around the restaurant for about 10 more seconds realized there was you know no safe the safe was hidden and actually ran right back out of the restaurant as fast as he could get out and the whole process was less than one minute. We were awakened by the security company calling us and letting us know and so we get to the restaurant my business partner Brandon got there first you know so then he let me know as a social media guy for Diablos you know I had to come up with a post because my initial reaction was like man we're gonna have to put up a piece of plywood over this this broken door just to get the restaurant open and operating and it was also a challenge to get open by 11 o'clock with getting the register reset back up replaced you know it was a just a big frustration and then again it was how do I let the customers know that you know their first visit to Diablos and they've got a plywood door I mean this looks really bad for a business.

I came up with a kind of a thing of if you see our on Facebook if you see our door looking Hurricane Fabulous this is why and for some reason just because of the Easter weekend and just really thinking about the robber and like in that moment and what had happened to in his life that he literally broke in at 3 30 in the morning into a restaurant I'm not a morning person I don't want to be anywhere at 3 30 in the morning here he is 3 30 in the morning breaking into restaurants risking his life if the restaurant owner had been there if the police would have showed up and it would have gone bad in the altercation so many things and the guy didn't make one penny as I'm typing the Facebook message you know to let people know I just kind of shifted and was like you know what what would Jesus do in this moment what would what would be his response to to how this went down as I kept writing and typing it up the Facebook post my heart just was the guide and I decided that you know look maybe we can be a mentor for this guy I know it's a radical thought I know it's a radical change and then kind of realized too wow this is crazy that trying to be a little bit more helpful for somebody that's doing wrong in life is a radical change in direction I had no clue that it was going to go viral I was not trying to go viral with it a lot of people online thought it was a trap and there was a company that that did this as a trap but my heart was in the right place and and if this guy was trying to put food on the on the table and he can't find a job for whatever reason I wanted to be there for that guy I wanted to be the change in his life and again maybe a little bit from from the past of my life where you know some of my best days came out of my worst days if this was the reason that the guy had a different career path and we could mentor him I wanted to be there for that person the post ended up going viral pretty quickly on a local level and then the the two local stations reached out and did news stories that Saturday and both reporters said this is going to go really really viral and I laughed and didn't think so and then the next morning Easter Sunday I got a phone call from the UK national news and someone had made a meme on reddit the meme had got upvoted on reddit and then picked up by the news station and that was a national wire for the UK and then by the afternoon CNN had called the today show had called and we just was fielding phone calls from all over the world Australia and even was picked up on the Saudi Arabian news unfortunately the story doesn't have a happy ending we were tipped off to who the individual was from a friend of that individual who saw it on the national news knew that this Scott this was his deal he's been doing this for a long time in life and we believe that he was picked up in South Georgia for the same crimes about a month ago we don't know that for certain but all the parameters fit he was this individual was in Augusta that weekend that it happened but looks like he will be serving time in South Georgia for the same offense because he was caught but there was so much attention brought to the story on a national level and we had so many people reach out my cell number is in the Facebook post it's very very simple to reach me so I had people reach out from all over the place and and just stories of you know letting us know how we inspired them to do better in their own life and I guess at the end of the day if it made a change in someone's life then everything was worth it three or four days after the incident I had a phone call around five o'clock and and luckily my family was actually around with me got a phone call and the individual was in tears lives in Millersville Georgia and said that he had spent a lot of of his life in jail incarcerated for crimes and then and he was really broken up in speech as he was trying to talk and he said I just want to let you know that if the guy that I robbed would have had your response I would have spent the last 15 years free versus the last 15 years incarcerated and he said by the time I woke up in life and realized that I was being a bad human I had a lot of dues left to pay to society he said you know nobody does what you're doing it really touched me that was that was probably one of my most touching phone calls from everybody that had reached out he said every time that they would throw me in the jail I'd come back out with more anger to do more wrong and he said if somebody would have showed me some compassion it would have stopped it could have stopped my cycle of what I've done in life you know he said if you're ever in Millersville Georgia here's where I work come by and see me I I want to hug you and shake your hand and and tell you what a great person you are that that meant that meant everything to me you know you're really making a difference and making a change in someone's life and I've always tried to live a life of respect and understanding one of the things that I tell my employees we never know what's going on in someone's life we don't know if they're just having their worst day our job is as a restaurant owner is to serve you and to be there and and be a small part of your day but what we don't know is what's going on in someone else's life across that line you know you could have gotten fired from your job and you walked out grabbed your stuff and walked out of your job and it was the best job you ever had and three minutes later you're inside my restaurant you know and the best thing we can do is be there with a smile and and just try to make your experience great but on the other side that person just just had his bad his worst day ever he's gonna be a little upset he's gonna be edgy and sometimes they project that against us and what I tell my staff is they're not projecting it to you about you it's what's going on in their life to put them in that situation at that moment we've had some cases customer complaint resolution found out that the the woman was visiting a hospital which is across the street from one of my stores was visiting the hospital and her mother was passing away and she was literally spending the last moments of her life with her mother and of course she's going to be edgy with the staff and so her situation and what happened had nothing to do with my staff it had more to do with where her mind was and in my own personal life I I try to be remindful of what everybody's going through in life and not everybody's having a great day and you've been listening to Carl Wallace tell one heck of a story about how kindness and mercy they work in ways you don't even know and in ways that are indirect and mysterious and beautiful when we come back more of Carl Wallace who run Diablo Southwest Grill a chain of restaurants a part of his American dream here on Our American Stories. 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initial reaction of you know anger frustration or you know if i caught you in the act i would have killed you i would have killed you i would have killed you i would have killed you i would you know if i caught you in the act i would have killed you um they didn't harm my family i wasn't threatened um none of my employees were at risk nobody was at risk and they didn't steal any money i think i'd have been a little more frustrated if some money was taken but it wasn't i mean absolutely other than a couple hundred dollars for a broken glass door that was completely replaced the crazy flip side of it is is the outpouring of support from the community our sales have been up probably 10 in our local market since that happened we gained so many new customers that it's been unbelievable that how many people came in the first couple days i was doing a an interview and a local a radio personality share best came by and she just came by to pay it forward and wanted just she walked up to the register and paid for a a person's meal just because she's like i want to pay it forward and she walked in and just paid for a family's meal that she didn't even know she's like you inspired me to pay it forward and she came by the restaurant to bless somebody else just little incidences like that that happened so many times over the next couple days that was just absolutely unbelievable that you know how the community reached out and supported us back and we've we've been paid for that door a hundred times over hundred times over you just don't think that a small act of kindness is going to reach that much attention you know some of the comments online or had one lady say i wish i could marry carl and i thought it was hilarious my wife didn't find it quite as funny but uh she said well you come with more problems than you come with she needs to she gets the problems and and the and the good as well you know none of us are perfect people i was more amused than my wife was amused about it but yeah it's it's like that one little instance of kindness and this person thinks that everybody thinks that you're a perfect person and nobody's a perfect person you just you try to live life the best you can and do the best for people and so many text messages from people all over the world again my my cell number was on the facebook post that went viral all over the world so it didn't take but half a second to type my number in and shoot a text over and and just tell me what your thoughts were on what i did and you know of course i got a few that said i was crazy but that's okay i'm i'm fine with that you know that's my decision to do what i want and we're all have the right to lead our life the way we think is right we're all going to be judged but if you're going to judge me bad for doing right then that's a problem for you not a problem for me i got a few texts of you're you're what's wrong in this country people should be locked up and people should be should pay for their crimes and then i was always happy to respond back and say well if we don't break that cycle for somebody and we keep doing this who have we fixed who have we helped in life i don't know how we've changed into a society that decides to judge others for what they feel is correct i went viral for my kids a kicker uh 14 i made a field goal and we've got a lot of land and so i put it in the front yard made a tik-tok about it and said the best thing you can do as a parent is to support is support your child even if it means putting a field goal in the front yard and that went kind of viral on tik-tok which then esbn picked it up and so then esbn posted it to their instagram and it says you know father builds field goal for his kid blah blah blah and so he had 525 000 likes but and 5000 and something comments and the crazy thing is four thousand of the comments were negative you know that's an unfair advantage you know why would somebody do that why would some you know like my kid doesn't have that opportunity and then you know some were you know a little tongue in cheek imagine having a field goal and a dad you know kind of thing yeah and so you know i was right on top of it when it when it landed on esbn's instagram and i'm reading the first 30 comments and i'm just floored that i'm getting i'm getting negative you know like watch what happens he's gonna you know dad spent all that money and the kid's gonna quit and i'm like my my kid's been playing sports since four years old like that's all my kid cares about that's that's my that's my kid's passion he's not gonna quit they're like all this money and he's not gonna go anywhere i'm like well he's currently the fifth ranked kicker in the country right now so like i don't you know i don't understand the hate but this but the sad part of it was is that that's where we're at in society that you try to do something great for your child and give him and help him chase his dreams and that little bit of money that i spent to put a field goal up has really helped his success but i never realized that that would contribute to hate because you're trying to just do what's right for your child and support your child and we're now in a part of society that is that is looked down upon you know because somebody else doesn't have that opportunity that it's not right for you to have that opportunity one of my favorite things as an employer is to be able to mentor some of my employees when they when they ask for help and ask for business advice and i enjoy being there for them that's one of my i love my paycheck but i love being able to help employees on their whatever their career path may be in life and whatever advice that i'm able to to help them with and i've been very successful in life and i've been very fortunate i've worked very hard for it on two other companies along with diablos and one of the things i instill in my own kid who's 14 is that you don't have to be the smartest kid but if you're the hardest working kid you'll probably survive in life you'll probably do very very well i've had over the years some teachers you know want me to come back and do you know mentoring in class and you know give my testimony so to speak to to the kids and i'm like my testimony's not that great it's uh i didn't do well in school i was 0 51 remedial just about everything but i applied myself in life and i worked hard and always had a vision and a dream and if you have a vision and a dream and you're working towards those visions and dreams you're generally going to make it and a lot of kids sometimes just don't have a dream you know they just they're going through life i was fortunate to always have a dream of what i wanted to achieve and and same thing with diablos i wanted to create a regional chain of restaurants and you know be anywhere from you know 50 stores to 100 stores and my banker said and looked at me and he said that's just about an unachievable task out of augusta georgia and we did it and we started franchising and we've uh we've been very blessed but nobody supports us like our local community does and so we're we're happy to give back during the uh covet we ended up feeding some homeless people and just doing what we could in the community we fed some kids that were no longer getting school meals and so we we did what we could to support our community back and a special thanks to a few members of our team madison robbie and faith for the great work on that story and how often do you hear stories about businessmen in the movies in the mainstream media that sound like that the good guys a real good guy and we love bringing you stories and voices like this from all over the country you've been listening to carl wallace i love what he said when he said some of my best days came from my worst days indeed that's how the cooking started and then having that vision i love that he confessed that he wasn't a very good student who cares so many kids struggle through high school college but they have passions and talents that go beyond we love telling these stories we love getting these stories from you send them to our american stories.com they're some of our favorites these stories if you have a story in your town an entrepreneur who's done something like this or a random act of kindness which is all he did it was a random act of kindness and look at the response the story of carl wallace here on our american story new out of nowhere obstacles new all or nothing moments new less than likely triumphs season two of the unshakable's podcast has it all hi i'm ben walter ceo of chase for business and host of the show we're excited to bring you more inspiring stories from small business owners who share the what are we gonna do moments that ended up changing everything listen wherever you get your podcasts chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices message and data rates may apply jp morgan chase bank and a member fdic copyright 2025 jp morgan 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