Access Hollywood

He showed Cuba Gooding Jr. the money back in 1996. And earlier this week, Tom Cruise dished it out again, this time all in the name of good will.

Indeed, it was just another normal day at the Dairy Queen in Lexington, Virginia — until Cruise walked in and brought his on-screen heroics into the real world to change the life of a certain youngster.

The “Jerry Maguire” and “Collateral” star stepped up to the counter of the ice cream shop where he saw a tip jar with a photo of young Ashley Flint, who was injured in a go-cart accident. Following the accident, her family was left with a mountain of hospital bills.

So what did Tom do? Maybe chip in a buck? Two bucks? A twenty spot?

Try, five thousand dollars — in cash.

“He didn’t know this girl at all. They’re complete strangers and he made the donation, which I thought was very charitable and right at Christmas too,” Dairy Queen employee Jason Donald remarked.

Cruise has been on the east coast filming Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” and was actually with the director at the time of the generous donation.

And while Ashley would obviously like to thank Tom the terrific for being such a good Samaritan, it turns out she wasn’t really impressed when her mom told her the news.

“She woke me up and told me and I was just kinda like, ‘Cool,’ and then I tried to get back to sleep,” Ashley revealed. “And then I got up and found out what happened and I was like, ‘What?!'”

Source: Access Hollywood