When Carlos Valdez and his family feel a craving for pizza, they always turn to the same place; a Papa John’s in their Utah neighborhood. However, while the pizza is always good, what really delivers was the branch’s 89-year-old employee who always greeted them with “Hello, are you looking for some pizza?” whenever he made the delivery.
Like many senior citizens, Newey found that his pension just wasn’t enough to cover his monthly bills, so after retirement, he went back to work delivering pizzas. Despite being in his golden years, Dewey punched in and out of the Papa John’s he worked at for about 30 hours a week.
The Valdez family was so taken by delivery driver Derlin Newey’s optimism that they decided to share clips of his greetings with their 53,000 TikTok fans through their channel @vendingheads. The videos demonstrating the goodwill and kindness offered by Newey racked up such a strong following that Valdez decided it was only fitting to return the favor, and the community responded.
“It’s insane. Everybody loves him,” Valdez told CNN.
The Valdez family always enjoyed their interactions with him and began asking for him by name whenever they wanted their pizza delivered. Their TikTok followers loved Newey too, but questions began to pour in about why such an elderly man was still working delivering pizzas.
“Somebody at that age should not be working so much,” Valdez said.
This inspired the Valdez family to reach out to their followers in September 2020 to pull off a sweet surprise together for Newey. They asked users to donate what they could for Newey, hoping they could surprise him with a combined “tip” of a few hundred dollars, but they were soon in for a surprise themselves.
Be sure to reach the end of this article to see the full video 🙂
After the Valdez family reached out to their followers for donations, they ended up collecting far more for Newey than they ever thought possible at the start.
“Collectively as a community, we all came together and we were able to raise over $12,000 for this amazing person,” Valdez told KSL 5 TV.
With the check signed by the “TikTok Family,” this time, Valdez, his wife and their daughter found themselves knocking on Newey’s door with a delivery of their own.
The surprise was filmed and shared on Twitter with a caption that read:
“89-year old Derlin Newey started delivering pizzas to make ends meet. He never thought one of his customers would change everything.”
Newey, who lives alone, had absolutely no inkling of the surprise, nor was he entirely familiar with TikTok as an app. “You communicate with each other through the telephone?” he said in the clip.
The Valdezs then presented the check to Newey, who quickly broke down.
“How do I ever say thank you?” Newey struggled to say through tears. “I don’t know what to say.”
The Valdez family and Newey were both inspired by how generously the community had come together, with Newey even quipping, “There’s hope!”
For Valdez, the entire experience not only lived up to his expectations but exceeded them.
“This couldn’t have gone any better,” he said in the clip, and added, “He needed this. I’m just glad we could help him. … We just need to treat people with kindness and respect the way he does. He stole our hearts.”
Did you find this wonderful story about kindness and generosity touching? If so, let us know and then pass this along to anyone who needs a little bit of their faith in humanity restored!
