When the staff at Domino's didn't receive an order from Kirk Alexander for more than 10 days, they knew something was wrong.
A slice of pizza can mean a lot of things. It's enough to make someone’s movie night special; it can comfort someone healing from a bad breakup or even make a family dinner a cheery affair. But, it is rather improbable that a pizza can save someone’s life. In the summer of 2016, a Domino's Pizza outlet at Silverton Road saved a man’s life. Kirk Alexander, from Salem, Oregon loved to order from Domino's every day for more than ten years. Unsurprisingly, the staff of the outlet knew him by name and his daily order became part of their routine.
Domino’s staff told BuzzFeed News that Kirk usually ordered chicken wings, pasta, sandwiches, and pizza, almost every night around midnight. But one day, it came to the staff’s notice that they hadn’t received Kirk’s order for the past eleven days. The evening delivery drivers who were accustomed to carrying his order, found this unsettling. It raised an alarm that something was wrong. They started to ask around to find out if all was okay. The general manager of this pizzeria outlet, Sarah Fuller, told The Statesman Journal, “Several of our drivers had commented that they hadn’t seen an order come through for him recently. And when we looked it up, we knew instantly it wasn’t normal.” It was Saturday night. When Kirk’s order still didn’t appear in their records, Fuller sent Tracey Hamblen, one of the delivery men, to his house to see if everything was okay.
Upon checking his address from their customer records, Tracey reached Kirk's house. The lights were on and there were sounds of television in the background. However, when he pressed the doorbell, nobody answered, which raised another red flag. “It was about 1 a.m. Sunday morning, and we weren’t terribly busy. So I asked one of our regular drivers who knew Alexander to stop by the customer’s home on Penticton Circle NE and check it out. We all know Kirk and he only lives about six minutes from our store, so the whole team was concerned.” When Tracey returned empty-handed to the restaurant, the staff sent emergency services to Kirk’s house. They called the local county sheriff’s office. Later on, the Marion County Sheriff's Office posted a statement on Facebook addressing the issue. They confirmed two emergency responders arrived at Kirk’s house and heard Kirk was calling for help. “When the Sheriff’s Office arrived at the residence in the 4100 block of Penticton Circle NE, they could hear a man calling for help from inside the residence. Deputies forced entry and found Kirk Alexander, age 48, of Salem down and in need of immediate medical attention.” It was the quick action of Tracey that helped Kirk who was then taken to Salem Hospital. “The Sheriff’s Office would like to personally thank Mr. Hamblen for his quick actions and willingness to take time out of his day to care for others,” the statement read.
Subsequently, the pizzeria’s staff visited Kirk in the hospital, bringing him, not a box of pizza but oodles of flowers and cards this time. "He is just an important customer that's part of our family here at Dominos," Fuller said. "I think we were just doing our job checking in on someone we know who orders a lot. We felt like we needed to do something." Jenny Fouracre, a corporate spokeswoman for Domino’s in Ann Arbor, told the Statesman Journal, “We are proud of our team members who took the initiative to reach out and help a regular customer who was in distress. There are thousands of Domino’s stores across the country, but every store is really a part of their neighborhood, delivering to people in their homes, which means we often get to know our customers well. We have many stories of how our stores have helped regular customers in ways that are big and small over the years, which is a level of customer service and commitment to our communities that we hope everyone will emulate."
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