I’m stunned after I earned a $42,000 ‘tip’ for delivering a $40 pizza order in a snowstorm
An Indiana pizza delivery man has been left stunned after a police officer raised $42,000 for him when a wealthy local only tipped $2 to deliver a pie in a snowstorm.
Connor Stephanoff, 20, of Brownsburg, parked his grandma’s car at the top of the hill and made the nearly mile-long trek to deliver a pizza to a home down the road in the ritzy neighborhood that had been blocked by a bus.
On his journey Stephanoff, who works for Rockstar Pizza, came across officer Richard Craig who was helping with the road congestion.
Craig told DailyMail.com: ‘(I thought) no one is delivering pizza on foot! No one is walking a pizza. Not today! That’s not happening!’
Except it was exactly what Stephanoff was doing.
Dressed in just a gray pair of sweatpants, a Nike crewneck, and a hat, and armed with an insulated Rockstar Pizza bag, Stephanoff hiked through several inches of snow in a pair of sneakers to make sure dinner was on the table in the affluent neighborhood.
While the young man was walking up the middle of the icy road back to his car, Craig stopped him to talk and started filming him because ‘no one was going to believe me’.
‘You delivering pizza, bro?’ Craig yelled down in a TikTok video posted to his account, which has garnered more than 112,000 views. ‘Did you get a good tip?’
A dejected Stephanoff, who was hiking back to his car, said: ‘Two dollars.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Craig asked in the video and the young man just laughed and shook his head.
When asked how much the order cost, Stephanoff checked the receipt, revealing it cost $40 – meaning the homeowner only tipped him five percent.
‘It broke his spirit a little. It’s enough to break things a little at that age,’ the father-of-four told DailyMail.com.
Despite the drastically low amount, Stephanoff ‘knew what the tip was going to be before going out’ in the snow, Craig said. He even volunteered to do so, despite police warning locals to steer clear of the dangerous roadways.
Up to 40 crashes an hour were happening in the county that day – January 10 – due to the heavy snowfall and it took Craig 25 minutes to make the three mile drive to the scene, the law enforcement officer told DailyMail.com. Stephanoff also had to drive really slow to get to the home.
Yet, Stephanoff did it anyway and had even spoke with the homeowner about his ordeal, who offered nothing more in return, just shut the door.
After hearing about the measly tip, it just didn’t sit right with Craig, who said he’s ‘all about doing the right thing’.
As the 20-year-old made his way back to his grandma’s car, the officer found himself scrambling to pull together a bigger tip for Stephanoff.
He asked everyone around him for change and eventually found $15 in his truck to hand to Stephanoff as he was leaving. He apologized for not having more to give, but he said Stephanoff didn’t care, he just seemed defeated.
That night, the father-of-four, who has two kids around Stephanoff’s age, decided to use his platform of 163,000 followers to help garner a bigger tip for the young man, whose work ethic far outpaces those in his own age group, Craig told DailyMail.com.
‘I was hoping to raise $500 to knockout any bad experience from this,’ Craig told DailyMail.com. He also wanted to reward the young man’s hard work and dedication to his job.
Stephanoff lives with his grandmother and has since he was a young teen after he was removed from his parent’s home by the Department of Child Services, Craig said. His grandmother was letting him use her car for work.
The next morning, Craig’s video had 20,000 views and people were asking for ways to donate to Stephanoff, so the officer started a GoFundMe, which has since raised more than $42,000.
‘It shows how much this world is yearning for kindness,’ Craig said.
Stephanoff didn’t even know Craig had started the GoFundMe until his grandmother told him about it.
‘I found out around Sunday morning,’ Stephanoff told Today last week. ‘I was like: “Oh, this is real!”‘
He told the outlet he hopes to buy a car with the money so he can stop using his grandmother’s. If he has any left, he hopes to help his grandma pay off any bills.
‘If I still got some leftover, hopefully, college,’ he told Today.
Rockstar Pizza posted on its Facebook page that it did not force any of its drivers to work the day of the snowstorm.
‘We gave inside personnel the option of staying home, coming to work or having us pick them up and take them home,’ it wrote.
‘Our head delivery driver makes the call on if we’re going to offer delivery. If he says he doesn’t feel like it’s safe, we don’t deliver. We had kitchen people with four-wheel drive cars who wanted to deliver. They knew tips generally would be higher.’
The store thanks Craig from the ‘bottom of our heart’ for ‘showing Connor so much love [and] support.’
‘You have no idea how much this positively affects his family,’ it wrote.
