Last weekend, a teenage punk became an online hero. Bryson Del Valle, a 17-year-old high school senior from Costa Mesa, booked a punk show in the back of a Denny’s in Santa Ana, California. The Long Beach punk band Wacko played a 20-minute set to a chain restaurant full of rowdy kids who managed to do nearly $2000 of damage before the show was shut down and moved to a generator under a bridge three miles away.

“All it took was some initiative,” Del Valle tells Billboard in a new interview. He paid a $100 deposit to rent the room, and Denny’s didn’t ask too many questions. A spokesperson for Denny’s told Billboard that the manager assumed he was renting the space for a meal, “which is the room’s intended purpose,” and that no one had ever done anything like this before. (A metal band played at a Denny’s in 2013, but the spokesperson clarifies that that Denny’s had been abandoned and was not a functioning location.)

Del Valle helped shut the show down at the manager’s insistence after someone pulled down one of the restaurant’s light fixtures, someone else threw a laptop into the mosh pit, and the cops were called. “She was super nice the whole time, though,” Del Valle says. Later, he heard from the manager that “they wanted $1,800 for damage and that I had to pay it through cashiers check or money order. I don’t even know what a money order is.”

Del Valle isn’t sure what was on the document he signed, and even if he did sign a rental contract, it’s probably not enforceable under California law since Del Valle is a minor. Either way, though, he’s not trying to dodge the responsibility. Plus, the band set up a GoFundMe for Del Valle and quickly raised over $1000 after the story went viral. “We knew we had to help him out,” Wacko frontman Zaine Drayton tells Billboard. “I hadnt met him before until this show when he messaged me and asked, ‘You want to play a show at Denny’s?’ I was like, ‘Oh, don’t play with me man.'”

Another GoFundMe page, which was started to raise the remaining $400 that Del Valle owed, has already received nearly $3000 in donations. “My mom was so proud,” Del Valle tells Billboard. “She told me, ‘I’m trying not to be too proud because what you did was probably illegal, but I am proud.'”