Lost and Found

It's strange. I find money all the time. I find it on the ground and it's almost always what I'd consider unreturnable. I think I have a very fine tuned perception of my surroundings or something and so I see things that most people just walk by. For instance, I found three $5 bills rolled up on the casino floor the other day. Then, late a couple nights ago I was walking through the parking lot to my car and I saw a cold, wet $20 bill laying on the ground against a fence. I'd never be able to find the rightful owners in those situations so I consider that lost treasure and the finders keepers rule would apply. Today, however, I found something quite a bit bigger.

I woke up this morning in a king size bed inside room #220 at the Holiday Inn in Cherokee. After showering and moving out of what felt like my thousandth home in 11 weeks, I pulled out onto the road in route to Tribal Grounds Coffee for my morning usual. For ritualistic reasons, I didn't want to arrive at the coffee house as quickly as I was about to and so I made a right turn onto 441, drove across the bridge, and then made a U-turn to continue towards my destination. As I crossed the bridge for the second time I noticed something in my lane that looked like a wallet. I made another U-turn and drove back to take a closer look. I drove back by slowly and this time it didn't look like a wallet at all, but instead a book, like a day planner or such. As I made yet another U-turn, I said aloud that I'd stop anyway, snatch it up and try to find the owner.

I stopped in the middle of the highway, opened the car door and reached down and plucked the black, leather-like book from the asphalt. It had been run over by a few cars but all the contents appeared to be in place. And those contents were not what I expected to see. Right off the bat I saw $20 bills, but there were only 4 of them together with a few fives and ones. The I saw the bank envelope and I inventoried seven $100 bills. Yikes! This was no ordinary find; this was $800!

The thought of keeping the money and throwing the wallet over the bridge never entered my mind. I had the lady's drivers liscense, her social security card along with another person's social secuity card, a few credit cards, some business cards, insurance cards and so forth. It was then that I realised that today held a purpose for me, to get this lady back her wallet.

I pulled into the parking lot of Tribal Grounds and started my mission by taking a more detailed inventory of the items contained within the wallet. I was looking for a phone number. The last thing I wanted to do was to turn it in to the cops, fuck that. This was my case and I intended to solve it with all this lady's cash intact and accounted for. Once I couldn't find a phone number, I decided that Google would be my starting point. I tried to find the lady's phone number by searching her name and address but instead I found her Facebook. The trouble there was that I wasn't her friend so I couldn't see her info. I went beyond her to her friends but they all had their info hidden too. Damn, it was a dead end.

The next thing I did was call the casino. I figured the lady must have been there, especially since the bank envelope had "$1400" written on it and as I said already, it only contained $700. To me, that was a dead give away that the casino was involved, but when I spoke to them, they had no record of any of the names I had associated with the wallet. I gave the representative my name and number and she said she would continue to dig around.

I then went back into the wallet and found some business cards. One particular card would turn up a nice lead. It was for a title loan company and when I called I explained the situation and the lady told me that the wallet's owner was indeed a customer of hers. She wouldn't give me the lady's phone number but she got my info and said she would try to contact her. I hung up and waited.

In the mean time I thought about it more and figured the owner of the wallet must have been on a motorcycle. From that point on I kept an eye out for motorcycles in my vicinity with GA tags and I knew what the lady looked like from her ID and her Facebook profile pic. I also called Capitol One from the card in the wallet, but they weren't able to do what I wanted which was to contact the lady asap so I could return the items. They only wanted to fill out a lost card report and contact her later. Worthless.

About 30 minutes after talking to the lady at the title loan company I called her back. She said that she had called the wallet's owner and left a message, but knowing that the nature of her business leaves her with plenty of ignored phone calls, she decided to give me the phone number. I immediately called the number. She answered her cell and I asked if her name was Ms. X and she said yes. I asked if she lost her wallet, she said yes and I told her I had it. She was right around the corner and she and her companion drove right over and I returned the wallet safely and accepted a hug from Ms X.

It turned out that she was in a pick up truck, not on a bike. They had not been to the casino but were in fact looking for somewhere to elope. They had stopped at a gas station and were both on cell phones when she left her wallet on the tool box in the bed of the truck. They had gotten all the way to Maggie Valley before realising that the wallet was gone and then driving back to Cherokee in search of the wallet. The guy told me they had been praying for a good samaritan since they realised it was gone and I was glad I could be that guy.

The lady tried to offer me $40 but I wouldn't take it. It was a fun hour and a half for me. I served a purpose for these people and it felt good. And as I've learned, the reason for doing what I did is not to get something in return, I don't expect the universe to reward my good deed. I did it because it was the right thing to do. Mission accomplished.