Within minutes, the image seemed to explode on the Internet. Soon a meme was born and the hashtag #alexfromtarget became a trending topic. (Yet the dark side of this marvel, including death threats against him and his family, would not become clear for several days to come.)

Alex, who was working the register all day, had no idea he had become an Internet sensation. His first glimpse came sometime that afternoon, when he started noticing that his checkout line was unusually long. Then his Target manager, Molly, who is a senior in high school, showed him the photo on her phone.

Young girls soon appeared, animatedly giggling and snapping photos of him as he rang up their items. It got so out of hand that Molly transferred Alex to work in the stockroom for the rest of his shift. When Alex finally turned on his phone around 6 p.m., it almost leapt out of his hand, with dings, chirps and vibrations from friends trying to inform him of his new celebrity.

“I was getting tons of texts,” Alex said. “They’re all saying, ‘This is crazy, you’re famous!' ”

At 6:09 p.m., Alex walked out of Target, hopped into the front seat of his mother’s Mercedes and looked at his Twitter page, which had over 100,000 followers at that point. He tried to tell her what had happened, but he wasn’t sure himself. Alex then asked his new disciples, “Am I famous now?” This message has since been retweeted more than 42,000 times and favorited by 86,000 users.

Image A screenshot of an image of Alex Lee posted on Twitter.

To say Alex is “a sweet kid,” as his parents describe him, is an understatement. He’s shy and exceedingly polite. He often chuckles to himself after speaking. While he answered most of my questions with short and sheepish replies, when I asked him about his girlfriend, Lindsey, he lit up, telling me that they met in chemistry class after sitting next to each other for a lab assignment.