Singer John Legend donated $5,000 to a GoFundMe account aimed at wiping out student lunch debt in Seattle schools this year.
The fundraiser organizer, Jeff 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.
