His colleagues and co-workers found out about Sonner's fatal heart attack yesterday.

For a man so full of life and generosity, they say it’s hard to believe he's gone.

“Shock and then sadness at first and then the concern for his daughter and his family, that was the main thing,” says Jody Clark, Bully’s District Manager.

Clark says it was Sonner's attitude about the local community that made him want to work for the native New Yorker 10 years ago.

“Paul believed. you are a local business. You are only as successful as how you are viewed in the community. If the community supports you, why not give back to the people who support you. That's been his whole philosophy since he opened Bully's in 1994,” says Clark.

Just looking in our video library, what Clark says rings true. Sonner used his establishments to take up causes he believed in.

“I figured we could raise money, and I just wanted to figure out the best way to do it, and this is what I came up with. I came up with the idea everybody goes out for Monday Night Football and 3 to 4 hours and we are going to get people to come out and everything they spend we are going to donate,” Sonner told us in a interview back in 2005 for one of his many events.

There was a fundraiser for the New York Fire Fighters just after 9/11, and another for Hurricane Katrina survivors. Don't forget feeding the needy on Thanksgiving was an annual event at Bully's.
And when one of his bartenders, Kevin O'Connell, was fatally stabbed almost one year ago, it was Sonner who raised more than $10,000 for the children O'Connell left behind.

“He was just a great man,“ said Breona Orduna ,an employee who started out as a waitress 5 years ago, and is now a general manager at Bully’s.

Orduna is one of scores of Bully's employees who says Sonner believed in them and was great to work for. According to Clark, 50-percent of those who work for Bully's have been with the company for more than five years.

“Anyone who has known him, knows he a great guy and that's what they need to know,” says Jody Clark

Funeral arrangements for Paul Sonner are pending.