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Helping someone out
provides its own rewards
By DAVID ZINMAN
of TheColumnists.com
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Ever found a wallet? Or wondered what you would do
if you did? That happened to us last weekend as my wife Sara and I drove 700 miles to South Carolina to escape the ice and snow of winter in New York. We left Long Island at 9 a.m. We spent the night in Cape Charles, Va. The next day, we pulled up at 1 p.m. to have a picnic lunch at a rest stop near Rocky Mount, N. C. An elderly couple was leaving. And a tall, gray-haired gentleman with a cane stopped to chat with Sara as we unpacked our food. It was 1 p.m. on Election Day. He told her the election was over as far as he was concerned. He heard that a tiny precinct of 20 people in Vermont had voted and the results were 12 for Bush, 7 for Kerry, and 1 for Nader. “That place has predicted results of every election for the past 40 years,” he said. Sure enough, it would turn out to be right again. The gentleman said he and his wife were from New Hampshire and on their way to Florida. We wished them a safe trip. They had just driven off when Sara spotted a wallet on the ground. It had fallen out of the man’s pocket as he got up from his picnic table. I opened it and found it had only $31 in cash. But it had his driver’s license, three credit cards, and his social security and Medicare cards. I could only imagine how he would feel. Sara and I had lost or had our wallets stolen recently. I remember the dark, depressing feeling that swept over us. I felt like I had lost a part of myself. In the weeks that followed, I had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get back my driver’s license by writing letters to the New York motor vehicles bureau. At the rest stop, we waited a half hour, hoping the man would come back. He didn’t. In my mind, I pictured the scene a few hours later. He would stop for gas or dinner or sign up at a motel and reach in his back pocket. And then he would know that dark, depressing feeling. What to do? There was no manager at the rest stop. I thought of calling the police and giving them the wallet. But then I wouldn’t know the end of the story. So I took his wallet with us as we drove to her old family home in Conway, S.C. When we got there, I thought of mailing the wallet to his home in New Hampshire. But he was in Florida. And I didn’t know where he was staying or how long. Then, I remembered his credit cards. Each had an 800 number. I called them all, told them the story, and they put a block on his account. On one of the numbers, I gave the customer service lady my name and my phone number. The lady said she thought he would probably be calling to report his lost card--if he knew how to reach them. If he did, she said she would give him my number. The next day, the phone rang. Sara answered. It was the man who had lost his wallet. He thanked her profusely. It turned out that his wife had a duplicate set of credit cards. So he said he did not discover his wallet was missing until he stopped at a motel and went to bed. He was at the home of his son whom he was visiting. He gave us his address in Florida. And he told us to take some money out of what was in the wallet to pay for sending it to him. We said we would return the rest. But he insisted we give it to our favorite charity. And we did. There is a footnote. The lady at the credit card firm said in her three years with the firm she had gotten hundreds of calls about lost or stolen wallets—but only two from people who had found them. “You’re good Samaritans,” she said. It was nice to hear that. But the truth was we felt as good as I think the elderly man did when he heard someone was returning his wallet. It made our day to know that he had peace of mind. That was reward enough. ©2004 by David Zinman. The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. |
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