Every birthday, every Christmas, every Mother’s Day, Jasmine Stelker struggles to get her mom, Cathy Bellah, just the right gift.

“She is so hard to buy for. She never asks for anything,” Jasmine says.

But last fall, Cathy mentioned that she liked the new James Avery sterling-silver charms emblazoned with the Whataburger logo. Cathy had just started working at a Whataburger restaurant in Port Aransas, Texas, not far from the family’s home in Corpus Christi,

Jasmine took note and began a mission, which proved harder than she initially thought.

The $60 Whataburger charm went on sale Oct. 10, 2017, available only on Whataburger.com. It sold out in less than an hour.

For weeks, demand remained intense.

So Jasmine started a quest to get the charm through the Whataburger.com website, a commitment that involved checking the site daily – sometimes hourly.

One day, a single charm became available online, and Jasmine snagged it.

A Family Effort

On Cathy’s birthday, the family gathered to celebrate. Jasmine couldn’t be there in person, but she wrote her mom a heartfelt note to accompany the Whataburger charm.

For Cathy, the gift was symbolic of so much … the love of her family, her employer and the community. You see, barely a month after Cathy donned her Whataburger shirt for the first time, Hurricane Harvey rolled into Port Aransas and devastated the Whataburger restaurant.

She was reassigned to the Corpus Christi restaurant (much closer to her home) while Whataburger rebuilt damaged restaurants. 

But six weeks later, she chose to go back to work at the reopened restaurant in Port Aransas – a 45-minute drive from her home. The reason: She was close with her fellow Family Members, many of whom have played Guesstures and card games at Cathy’s house. Some even shared Thanksgiving dinner with Cathy and Todd.

“That store is my home,” she says. “Those people are family.”