A NICE STORY FROM KNOXVILLE: MooYah’s reopens after accident; staff got paid during 12-day shutdown.

Nick DeVore lost 12 days of business during the height of the Christmas shopping season at his MooYah Burgers-Fries-Shakes restaurant on Kingston Pike, all because of a suspected drunken driver who slammed her car through the eatery’s front wall on Dec. 18, then drove away before anyone could get her name or license plate number.

It took that long for DeVore to get insurance adjusters, a contractor, and a repair crew out to the store, and get a temporary wall built so he could reopen.

Even though DeVore will take a big financial hit from the incident, none of his 15 employees will. They came back to work Wednesday morning with smiles on their faces after a nearly two-week, unplanned paid vacation that included Christmas Day.

That’s because DeVore, the store’s owner and operator, decided to keep paying them even while MooYah’s was closed.

A nice gesture, and I’m glad he could afford it.