How A Tweet Saved Fresno Store Owner’s Lonely Anniversary Party

FRESNO, CA — Dave High’s party for his store’s 35th anniversary was saved by a tweet. On Wednesday, he ordered cupcakes and sodas to thank the folks who have kept his north Fresno Sunrise Vitamins in business, but the problem was, no one showed up.

Then Kayla Jackson and her husband stopped into the business lined with shelves of vitamins, supplements, essential oils and other products during the early evening hours. They were the only customers and Jackson didn't like that.

So she sent out the tweet that saved the party from the Dumpster.

“We were just talking to him,” she told television station KSFN. “He was just saying it was his 35th anniversary, and how he didn't expect it to be this slow. He was kind of sad that no one had come in yet.”

Jackson was relentless. Getting people to stop in for a cupcake and a drink wasn’t enough. She tweeted a few more pictures and included the phone number for Sunrise Vitamins. “Call him and make his day!” it instructed.

Give Jackson the “good cheer officer of the day” award. Calls poured in from all over — not just from Fresno, but Colorado, Hawaii and Mexico.

High’s day — and the one after that — was made, all right.

“It just went off the clock,” High told KSFN Thursday after he took a call from a well-wisher from afar. “Everybody was coming in from 9 in the morning until right now. People were in the store shopping.”

High is an old-school shopkeeper who writes down his customers’ names, phone numbers and other information on a notepad and doesn’t advertise. He doesn’t use social media and wasn’t even sure what Twitter was until Jackson used the social media site to spread the word about his party.

“I will have to look on the internet and see what it means,” he told the television station.

After the experience, he said he might give social media a whirl. If he does, Jackson says she’ll help him learn how to navigate it.

In the meantime, he has received plenty of “earned media” — the term for public relations that comes without paid advertising. News groups from around the country have picked up the story, from the local business publication to television networks.

Follow Jackson's kindness here on Twitter:

Photo by Kayla Jackson, used with permission