Woman Says She Quit Sushi Chef Job, Drove 10 Hours To Meet Tinder Match Living In A Bus: “I Was Pretty Sure That I Was Either Going To Be R****, Murdered, or Have My Car Stolen”

Amelia Quest said she quit her dream job as a sushi chef and drove roughly 10 hours from Florida to North Carolina to meet a man she had matched with on Tinder, despite warnings from nearly everyone around her that she could be murdered.

Quest said she matched with the man because of a prompt on his profile. He said he had been living in a bus for 13 years, a lifestyle she had been dreaming of experiencing herself.

“I matched with him on Tinder and had never met him in person until I drove to North Carolina,” she said. “He was a crazy looking man, and the only reason I matched with him was because I was interested in the fact that he had been living in a bus and I wanted to pick his brain about the process.”

“He stood out because my goal in life was to experience ‘van life’. Even before I matched with him, I had been looking into what I needed to do a van restoration, and looking into school bus communities.”

At the time, Quest was working in what she describes as her dream job and had just received an injury settlement following an accident at a supermarket a few years earlier.

“I had a slip and fall at Publix during the pandemic. Two years later, while I was a sushi chef, I got that payout, $30,000, and I decided I was going to change my life with it,” she said.

“I decided to start a company to manage social media accounts for companies or influencers.”

Quest initially planned to keep working as a sushi chef until her business took off, she said, but her Tinder match’s plans to travel and document his lifestyle gave her another idea.

“We had been communicating about his bus, and after speaking with him about his plans to travel and document his lifestyle, I thought it could be an opportunity to combine my interest in van life with starting my social media career,” she said.

Despite having no clients at the time, Quest said she decided to take the gamble.

“I quit my dream sushi chef job to go to North Carolina and meet him,” she said. “I started filming from the gas station in Florida and recorded bits of my travels during the ten or so hour journey.”

Almost everyone around her was convinced she was making a potentially life threatening decision, she said.

“Everybody was convinced I was going to be murdered by this man,” she said.

“Most people were saying ‘don’t meet a man who lives in a bus, he’s homeless.’ I was like, ‘Guys, you only live once. If this is how I die, at least you get to watch it.'”

When she arrived, Quest said the situation was stranger than she had imagined.

“I got to go inside of his bus, where I found out that he 100% is a homeless man living in a not converted bus,” she said.

“There were no chairs in the bus, just a mattress on the ground and some wine that he had made himself. I was like…’Okay, that’s crazy.'”

Quest said she spent about two hours hiking with the man and another woman he had picked up in South Carolina before leaving them and staying the night at a friend’s house.

The next day, she said, the man suggested she meet him at a remote location before the two traveled another hour and a half alone in her car to go river panning for rubies.

“He wanted me to meet him at a trail that had just closed for a yearlong restoration project so that we could then drive an hour and a half away to the woods where we were going to river pan,” she said.

“He wanted to leave his bus at the trail and take my vehicle only, because his bus wasn’t going to be able to get where we needed to go.”

The plan raised enough alarm bells that she became convinced the situation could turn dangerous, Quest said.

“As soon as I saw these red flags and was pretty sure that I was either going to be r****, murdered, or have my car stolen, I told him, ‘it’s an hour before it gets dark. I don’t feel comfortable doing any of this’.”

Rather than accepting her decision, Quest said, the man became angry and told her she had “failed the test” and would not be able to work with him.

“He started getting incredibly mad at me and trying to belittle me, telling me that I didn’t pass the test and that I wasn’t going to be able to work with him,” she said.

“He proved exactly what the internet was saying, that I was going to be murdered by him.”

Quest said she cut ties with the man immediately and never saw him again.

“I literally just stopped responding to him,” she said.

Becoming the man’s social media manager never happened, but Quest said the trip kickstarted a career she never expected.

She had been documenting parts of the journey on Instagram, despite barely having posted on the platform before, and said her videos quickly began attracting attention.

Within 48 to 72 hours, her account gained about 12,000 followers, she said. It eventually grew to about 144,000.

The trip became the beginning of her social media career.

“I’m a firm believer that I wouldn’t change any one thing that has happened to me in my life,” she said. “There are so many things that have happened to me in my life that I wouldn’t change, because all of those things have helped me get to where it is that I am.”

“Where I’m at is pretty f****** cool, and I just wouldn’t trade it for the world.”