Uber Driver Rescues TikTok Influencer And She Rescues Him Right Back

Palm Desert CA

03 May, 2022

6:28 PM

Description

INDIO, CA — Nashville TikTok influencer Becca Moore was in a bind after being robbed at Coachella this year, and an Uber driver gave up his day — and Coachella surge pricing — to get her through the ordeal. It was a random act of kindness that helped her to see beyond her own problems. Now she is returning the favor by helping the driver, whose teenage daughter is battling cancer, with a Go FundMe campaign. It was on the third day of Moore's Coachella Music and Arts Festival visit that a lovelorn fan robbed her of everything — phone, wallet, rental car keys— all to get her attention. Moore, 23, was not impressed. "My friend overheard him say he was going to take my stuff so that I had to talk to him the next day, and he literally took my stuff," she told KTLA in a recent interview. "The next day I definitely wasn't thinking: 'You know who I'm not gonna date next? That guy.'" Moore was left without a penny to her name and no way to find the man who robbed her, so she couldn't retrieve her phone or license to prove who she was. Then, Moore found an Uber driver who took pity on her plight in Fresno resident Raul Torres. In her TikTok account, she tells of how Torres took charge of her, caring for her for hours and refusing to leave her side. "After I got in his car I pretended everything was fine, but he insisted on staying with me because he had an instinct that I needed help," she said on TikTok. The pair spent over six hours together as he took her to the cell phone store, to the police station, and to file a report. With the cops not moving fast enough, they figured out how to track her phone and found it six hours later. "He helped me get a rental car to get home. Never once did he tell me what he was going through personally until later. He literally spent the entire day with me," she said on TikTok. "He didn't have to do that." During their time together, the two bonded over Starbucks coffee and later margaritas. As they learned about each other, she discovered that he was the caretaker to his own ailing dad and father of teenage children, including a daughter undergoing chemotherapy. He understood being young in a bad situation and wasn't about to leave her alone until she was on her feet. Torres gifted his time and energy to the young woman in need of help at the cost of the famed "Coachella Uber fares," but it was the right thing to do, he told reporters. "Patience paid off," Torres told KTLA. "She got her phone back after about six hours." Though he didn't cash in on Coachella as he had planned he received something much better: A friend in a position to lift him up. Throughout the course of their day, they got to know each other. She learned that his father was battling cancer while his daughter, Myra, was also undergoing chemotherapy. A senior in high school, doing "normal things like prom and graduation is really hard for her," Moore said over TikTok. While he started out as her guardian angel, she became his. "After speaking to him and his wife, I realized how lucky I was to have gotten that specific Uber ride. I wanted to help him however I can, and GoFundMe seems like the best way." Days after the GoFundMe launched, Torres's father died, which he relayed to Moore. In one day, she raised $50,000 for him To date, Moore has helped to raise over $145,000 for Torres and his family. "This timeline of events made me realize this wasn't a coincidence," she wrote on the GoFundMe page. "Please keep helping Raul's family."