Giant Cheeto helps feed small town - The Final Word

Random acts of kindness come in many shapes and sizes.

One might help a child whose kitten is stuck in a tree. Or someone could spontaneously jump out of his or her car in heavy traffic and help someone else push their stalled car to the side of the road.

But Storekeeper 1st Class Michael Evans of Fleet Industrial Supply Center Pearl Harbor, chose another, more peculiar way to show his benevolence.

He mailed a deformed Cheeto back to the manufacturer, Frito-Lay, in hopes of feeding a small town. His decision to give up his lemon-sized "snack a saurous" to charity may have lost him a small fortune, but has made a huge impact for the needy of Algona, Iowa.

"I poured a bowl full of Cheetos for my kid, and out came this absolutely huge Cheeto," Evans said. "It was just beyond imagination, and I was really repulsed by it. So I picked it out with a paper towel, and I was going to throw it away.

"But I just stopped and looked at it and said, 'There's enormous humor potential here.' And being the humorous person I am, I asked myself, 'What's the absolute, funniest thing I can do with this Cheeto?' So I listed it on E-bay."

Evans had absolutely no idea of what would come next for his lemon-sized Cheeto.

"It's funny, you got to think to yourself, 'Who's the crazier one?' Is it the person who put the Cheeto on E-bay, or is it the person who actually bid on it?"

And bid they did. Sincere bids for the deformed hunk of cheesy cornmeal rose to around $5,000.

Bryce Wilson, a disc jockey for KLGA, Hometown Radio of Algona, saw reports of the Cheeto on CNN.

"I was doing show preparation and I saw something about the huge Cheeto on the news," Wilson said. "As kind of a joke, I asked listeners to pool together money for [the Cheeto]. I had no idea that this would happen."

But hackers and pranksters stole the show by bidding in the millions of dollars, causing E-bay to close the auction. After the auction was stopped on E-bay, Wilson e-mailed Evans, offering $180 for the wayward Cheeto.

So Evans executed "Plan B."

"It's one of those things that you have to take a look at and say, 'Where are my values?' And my values are, 'Hey, I'm going to do the right thing,' he said. "I could've had money for [the huge Cheeto], and I could've enriched myself with it, but that wasn't the intent of what I was trying to do. So I donated it to charity."

Evans told Wilson to take the $180 and donate it to the nearest food bank.

After finding out Evans had donated his "Cheeto money" to the Iowa's Kossuth County Food Bank, Frito-Lay, the makers of Cheetos brand snacks, donated $1,000 to the food bank and gave a large amount of Frito Lay merchandise to Wilson to auction on his radio shows.

An anonymous man from Indianapolis donated $2,500 in the name of the Cheeto to the March of Dimes.

And the recognition didn't stop there. Algona Mayor Lynn Kueck proclaimed a "Cheetos Day" in the city. Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," sent a crew to Algona to broadcast the unveiling of the Cheeto in its display case in Sister Sarah's restaurant in Algona.

"There was absolutely no hesitation for me to have the Cheeto displayed here" said Sister Sarah's owner Tom Straub. "This is 15 minutes of fame. It just goes to show you that there is no such thing as an insignificant conversation."

Straub said the Cheeto now sits on a gold-tasseled, purple velvet pillow, inside a glass case. "I have a security camera on it, but I don't anticipate there being any security problems," he said, pointing out that he's made an addition to his restaurant's menu in honor of the Cheeto. "It's called Cheeto Soup."

According to Frito Lay officials, Evans' Quasimodo-like Cheeto is the largest ever produced since the company began making the snack in 1948.

"I never intended for any of this to happen," Evans added "It started off as a little bit of fun I wanted to share with my family. But the world grabbed it and took off with it. It's really amazing that something as silly as a Cheeto can do so much good for people."

Hasenkamp is a journalist assigned to the public affairs office, Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor

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