It all started with a loose tooth.

Before school on the morning of Jan. 20, Decas Elementary School fifth grader Lexi Marcosa told her mother, Barbara, that she thought her tooth would fall out that day.

Her mother was skeptical, but Lexi was right.

"I was in chorus [before school] and I was wiggling my tooth between songs and it fell out," Lexi said.

But when she was cleaning up in the bathroom, the worst happened.

The tooth slipped out of Lexi's hands and fell into the drain. She became very upset.

"I wanted to show my mom because she said that it wasn't going to come out that day," Lexi said.

Michelle Skolnik, whose classroom is near the bathroom where Lexi dropped the tooth, heard the student's cries.

Skolnik and "Nana" Maria Vicente, a "foster grandmother" who volunteers at the school, went to the bathroom to see what was going on.

When they arrived, they could see the tooth in the drain, but couldn't reach it. The three stuck chewing gum on the end of pencils, Skolnik said, to try to fish the tooth out. But it just fell further down.

"We told her we were going to have to write a note to the tooth fairy for this one," Skolnik said.

But Lexi wanted her tooth.

"I think what we as adults don't realize is that for kids, that's their life right there," said Decas principal Aaron Viera.

In a final attempt to recover the tooth, they solicited the help of custodian Frank Santos.

Santos grabbed his tools and took apart the drain.

"All the water came rushing out into [a] bucket and we had to empty out the water to find my tooth," Lexi said.

Santos was humble about the incident. It only took five minutes, he said.

"All I had to do was unplug the drain plug ... and flush the water through," he said.

Lexi said she was very happy to get her tooth back. She put it under her pillow and the Tooth Fairy came. No note was necessary, thanks to Santos.

"He went above and beyond," Barbara said.

In his 40 years working for the school, that was the first time Santos has ever dismantled plumbing to retrieve a tooth, he said.

"In 40 years, this is your first tooth salvage operation?," Viera asked.

"That's my first ever," Santos said.

"It was cute," Skolnik said. "And so we're calling Frankie 'the Tooth Fairy'."