Jeff Lew, the Seattle dad who is leading the effort to wipe out student lunch debt in the city, met singer John Legend, who had donated $5,000 to the cause last month.
Lew and his wife Sophia attended Legend's concert Saturday night at Chateau St. Michelle and got to meet him after the show.
"It was such a beautiful night for such an amazing concert last night. I'm so thankful for John's generosity: giving us great seats to watch him perform, and also giving us an opportunity to meet him afterwards and personally shake his hand and thank him in person for helping out Seattle Public Schools," said Lew.
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Last month, Legend made a donation to Lew's GoFundMe account aimed at wiping out student lunch debt in Seattle schools this year.
Lew received an email notification that someone named John Stephens donated $5,000.
"I found out that the John Stephens donation was John Legend because my wife (a superfan), recognized his name once I showed her the GoFundMe email showing the $5,000 donation," Lew said in an email. "At first I didn't believe her and said 'no way...' That led me to do a Google search of John Legend. His Wikipedia page showed his name as John Roger Stephens. Once I saw that the John Stephens name matched what I saw on Wikipedia, I started getting a little excited but not fully believing it yet."
Lew said he sent a "thank you" message to Stephens and asked if he was Legend.
"I told him regardless if he is or he is not, I am thankful for his donation. I included my email address at the end of the thank you message so he can respond if he wanted to. To my big surprise, he responded to me with 'yes it's me.' subject line. He even included a short body message of 'glad you're doing this,'" said Lew.
@biglew8 My pleasure! We should have free lunch for all of our public students!
— John Legend (@johnlegend) May 29, 2017
Lew has already surpassed his $21,000 goal and the campaign is now over $34,000.
Legend's wife, model Chrissy Teigen, grew up in Snohomish.
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Watch a conversation with KING 5's Heather Bosch and Jeffery Lew on Facebook Live.
