Restaurant Worker Digs Through Trash to Find Missing Denture — Then Gets $1,000 Kindness Prize

"I went home and did the survey for her, but that just didn't seem like enough," Craig Paulk tells PEOPLE

An unusual incident that involved a missing denture at a Texas restaurant taught one man a lesson in the gift of kindness, inspiring him to pay it forward.

Craig Paulk, 44, stopped by at a Long John Silver’s in San Antonio on Aug. 21 for an early evening meal. Before he started eating, he removed his partial denture and tucked it in a napkin.

When he finished his meal, Paulk, a customer service supervisor at Lowe’s, threw his trash into the garbage bin. However, the problem was he also unknowingly discarded his denture, which he got after losing his front tooth five years ago after trying to bite off a hangnail.

He didn’t realize what he had done until after he went inside his car and patted himself to make sure he had his keys and wallet. For a brief moment, he thought about just leaving the denture inside the restaurant’s trash bin.

“I didn't want to have to do that and go back in and dig through the trash in front of people,” he tells PEOPLE. “I wasn't going to ask [the staff] to do it."

However, ultimately he decided it was better to go back and retrieve it himself. "I thought, 'I'll just go back in [and] just ask for the bag of trash and take it with me and be on my way,'” he says.

When he returned, Paulk spoke with the assistant manager, Stella Magano, and explained to her what happened.

According to Paulk, there was some back-and-forth discussion of whether he could take the garbage and let him sift through it.  Finally, Magano decided to fish for the partial denture herself. The bin was half full and Paulk had just eaten, so his trash was near the top.

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She asked me, ‘Well, what's it look like?’ I said, ‘It's folded up in a napkin.’"

"So she pulled about three or four plates out and was moving stuff around. I was looking with her and I said, ‘Well, maybe that's it.’ It was laid off to the side, and so she grabbed it and held it out. Sure enough, it was that," he says. "It was less than a minute that she was in the trash.”

Related: This 19-Year-Old's Random Act of Kindness Sparks Friendship with a Complete Stranger 

After his denture was retrieved, Paulk returned home and started to fill out a Long John Silver's online restaurant survey to compliment Magano.

“I was so embarrassed in that moment that I don't remember if I thanked her [for] any of that," he says. When he returned the following day to personally thank her, he found out that she had started her vacation and wouldn’t be back for a couple of days.

So Paukin went to the website of Fox San Antonio affiliate KABB, which has a program called Cash for Kindness that allows someone to nominate an individual for a selfless act of kindness–with the reward being $1,000. About three weeks later, KABB reporter Ryan Wolf texted Paulk about his nomination. From there, the two planned to surprise Magano on camera at the restaurant with the cash gift.

Related: Inspired by His Experience on 9/11, Man Launches Kindness Initiative to Give Others a 'Helper's High'

Ahead of the surprise, Paulk went over to Long John Silver's and asked Magano if she could be at the restaurant on Oct. 5, a Thursday, which is normally her day off. In order to keep things under wraps, he told her that a bunch of people from his Facebook restaurant group would be dropping by for a late lunch and wanted to meet her. Magano agreed to be there, switching her shift.

On that big day, Paulk recalls, “I met with Ryan and his camera guy. They did a little pre-interview, about 10 minutes out of sight of the restaurant, and then went in and surprised her. They awarded her with the money, and it was really good."

"It felt really good for her to get that recognition," he adds. "I couldn't do anything like that, other than just simply saying, ‘Thank you.’ But that just didn't seem enough.”

The Cash for Kindness segment that aired the following week on KABB showed Magano telling Wolf: “I know how easy it is to lose something, and no one wants to help.” Asked how she felt upon receiving the gift, Magano said “shocked” and “thankful."

Related: Meet the Kindest People in America: Good Samaritans Making Their Communities — and the World — a Better Place

Paulk tells PEOPLE that he spoke with the restaurant’s general manager shortly after the surprise happened. “I told her, 'I just wanted to let you know, Stella is one of a kind. She's amazing. I went home and did the survey for her, but that just didn't seem like enough. So that's the reason for this production today.’”

He later learned that the restaurant’s online survey that he submitted to praise Stella never went through, “so I was really glad that it worked out that she got the Cash for Kindness recognition.”

On what he got out of the experience, Paulk says that “kindness is free."

"We need more kindness. At the same time, you never know what you're going to get out of it, if that person's going to go on to do something for someone else that's even bigger, if it's going to affect someone in a bigger way, or if they're going to turn around and hand you a $20 bill," he says. "That shouldn't be the motive. But since this, I've had a little bit different perspective and trying to do nice things, to be kinder to people.”

He also added: “Maybe it'll serve as a reminder — make sure you have your teeth."

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