Karma - Lost & Found

So yesterday I put my 13 year old son on a plane on his way to Texas to see his dad. This is the first time I have sent him off to another state alone, scary! Well, last night I got a call from a man in San Diego saying he found an iTouch on a airplane and our # was under home. I explained my son was on the plane and that it must have got left behind. I told him I would be happy to send him some money as a thanks and to cover shipping, he said not to worry about it, "call it karma". What a guy!

I have had many of my own experiences at having lost things found and I have come to find out that there are more good people in the world then bad, and most people I believe want to do the right thing. I was just thinking there are people all across this country that do the right thing and I just don't think we hear enough about the do-gooders in the world.

I have a few examples (please don't judge me on being completely spacey when it comes to keeping track of my stuff!):

I have had my wallet and purse lost a number of times but this is the story that takes the cake. We were in Florida last spring and had a fabulous family trip. We were on our way home, through security and waiting for our plane home. We boarded the plane and it had a quick stop in Indianapolis when my husband checked his voicemail and had a message from his dad saying someone called and said they had one of our bags. Huh, I thought I mentally tracking my stuff I wondered what it was. Well when we landed in Chicago for a plane change I realized what it was. It was my main travel bag with my very important stuff: my wallet w/ both my husbands and my own ID's, my very nice Nikon digital SLR camera (with all of our vacation photo's), my iTouch (this has my life on it), my airplane transfers & my cell phone. My life was in that bag!! Luckily we were able to get new transfers at the airport desk, and we were through security so we were able to make it home without incident and when I got home I got to talk to the lovely lady that found it.

She said she was waiting for a plane when she realized her 3 year old son was going through somebodies bag. He was pulling the wallet apart and happily looking at the Mickey Mouse Disney tickets. She didn't want to leave it with the airport staff because she didn't know who would have access to it so she took it home to Maryland. She ended up sending it to me Fedex and would not even take cash out of my wallet to pay for it. I was so thankful for her help in getting it back to me, I would have been heartbroken to loose all those vacation photos. I did send her a thank you card and some money for a night out on me, but what she did for me was truly priceless.

Another time I had about $500 cash in my wallet because I was hoping to buy a piece of furniture off of Craigslist later in the day. I work at a hospital in Seattle with the methadone clinic right down the street. Needless to say, we get plenty of seedy people that congregate in the area. I went to the Rite Aid across the street to grab some stuff at lunch and kind of spaced and left my wallet (filled with cash) on the counter of the film area. I didn't realize this until later that evening when I was trying to find some cash to get out of the parking garage and realized I had no wallet. Oops! Well, I backtracked and ended up at the Rite Aid where the manager nicely went and retrieved my wallet from the safe, giving me a little warning about keeping that much cash in my wallet at one time. Some nice customer had found it and turned it in to him, saving my day! Not long before that...

I was up at our cabin in a pretty small town called Belfair. I made a grocery run and stopped to fill the tank before we headed to the cabin. Well, I must of left my wallet on the car roof when I was filling up and drove away without moving it. After freaking out for a few days, wondering where it could of gone, I got a big envelope in the mailbox with no return address or anything. In it, was my wallet...with not a dollar or anything else missing. Not even a note was included. Wow!

I just need something to happen so I can return the favor, call it "karma".