Woman Who Berated 'MAGA' Hat Wearing Man In Palo Alto Starbucks Loses Job
PALO ALTO (KPIX 5) – An accountant has lost her job after berating a man in public and online for wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap at a Starbucks in Palo Alto.
The confrontation took place at the coffeehouse on California Avenue on Monday, which quickly went viral.
Since losing her job, the woman has seemed to have gone into hiding, while the man was spotted wearing the hat Wednesday.
"You know, America is still a free country right?" said Victor F., a 74-year-old supporter of the president who lives in Palo Alto.
Victor casually went about his business on California Avenue on Wednesday, still sporting the red hat that prompted the loud confrontation at the Starbucks.
"This crazy woman came over and started raving at me. She turned to the rest of Starbucks and said, 'Hey everybody, here's this racist over here. He hates brown people, he's crazy, he's a Nazi,' and so forth," Victor told KPIX 5.
The woman, Rebecca Parker Mankey, then began taking photos and posting about it on her Facebook page, saying she was going to shame him, get him fired, kicked out of clubs and march up and down his street.
Victor says she left, then came back and tried to rile the Starbucks crowd once more.
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"'Hey everybody here's this racist,' and so on. And then as she wrote in her thing, she was disappointed everybody didn't come and mob me," he said.
In fact, the opposite happened. People started harassing Parker Mankey's family and her employer Gryphon Stringed Instruments, where she was an accountant.
The store owner decided to fire her after he read her Facebook posts.
"We feel that music is what brings people together. So having someone then making comments that are so divisive is not consistent with our values," said store owner Richard Johnston.
No one answered the door at Parker Mankey's home, but a female spoke through a closed window saying Rebecca doesn't live here.
"She didn't want to discuss the issues with me. She wanted just to scream about Nazi's and so on and that's what we've sunken to," Victor said.
Victor wears a yarmulke underneath his MAGA hat. He is Jewish and so to him, being called a Nazi is hurtful.
"People with an education should know better than to say stupid things like that," he said.