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‘Are you okay?’: Starbucks barista writes secret note to help teen girl

FILE- In this May 29, 2018, file photo, a barista reaches for an empty cup at a Starbucks, commonly referred to as the original Starbucks, in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Texas Starbucks employees are being credited for their quick thinking after they helped a local teenager feel safe when she was being bothered by a man she didn’t know.

Brandy Roberson, the mother of an 18-year-old girl, shared a now-private post to her Facebook page Friday explaining how a barista’s handwritten note helped her daughter avoid a potentially dangerous situation.

Roberson wrote that her daughter was studying by herself at the coffee shop Friday night, when employees at the Corpus Christi store grew concerned for the girl’s safety after they saw a man, displaying some “strange” behaviour, approach the girl.

Roberson wrote that a barista handed her daughter “an extra hot chocolate someone forgot to pick up” after the stranger started talking to her.

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On the cup was a handwritten note: “Are you okay? Do you want us to intervene? If you do, take the lid off the cup,” the message read.

A photo of the cup, posted by the girl’s mother to Facebook. Brandy Selim Roberson / Facebook

Roberson told NBC’s Today that her daughter said the man was “quite animated” and talking “fairly loudly.”

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“I believe this is what alerted the employees. He had also not come in with my daughter, so they knew she probably did not know him,” she explained.

Roberson told Today that her daughter didn’t feel the need to remove the lid from the cup, and that the man left when he realized she was communicating with the coffee shop’s staff.

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“How grateful I am for people who look out for other people!” she wrote.

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