A Good Day and Good People

I'm just back from Japan for a fairly brief break on a project that will fire back up a couple of days into the new year. I'm relaxing in my normal way, engrossed in a historical novel. For the last few months that's been the Marius Mules series by SJA Turney. I'm enjoying them, and I'm happy to point anyone in that direction if they enjoy Julius Caesar's Roman legions having at it with the Gauls. I'm not going to tell you that it's high literature (it isn't), but it's fun and I enjoy it.

My phone rings and I grudgingly answer. I'm not big on phone conversations, and this one very quickly becomes one I really don't want to hear. My wife is calling and she is in a panic. She has a reason to feel this way. She was at HEB, the regional supermarket, shopping for Christmas dinner. No big deal. She moved on to Walgreens to get something and found that she did not have her purse. The purse she just used at HEB to buy items for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, she is no longer at HEB.

Before she calls me, my wife goes back to HEB and tells them what's happened. They have good customer service and escort her back to the security area. They take a look at the last hours' security and see my wife leave the store...with her purse. However, HEB does not have cameras in the parking lot. They explained to my wife that it is store policy. (Why? I'm not going to speculate but I have some ideas.)

So, she left the store with her purse but didn't have it when she was at Walgreens. She is almost in tears as she is telling me this. She checked the parking lot at HEB but her purse was gone, along with her credit cards, driver's license...GREEN CARD!!! She is in panic mode. She says, "I must have left it in the shopping cart. What are we going to do?"

I would like to say I was completely calm, but I wasn't. I vacillated between calm and...not calm. I was saying things like "Ok, we're going to have to call the credit card companies quickly, get the cards cancelled, and new ones on the way," and "I'm not sure the exact procedure but we need to get moving on replacing the green card, which will likely take the longest."

Then the doorbell rang. I told my wife that I was going to answer it. I didn't know the man at the door. He asked for my wife by name and if she was home. I said she wasn't and asked why he needed to see her. He told me that he and his wife had found her purse, and since they lived close thought they would bring it by. They had found her name and address in the personal items inside.

We had a very nice moment, as you might imagine, and my wife got her purse back. Yes, there are still good people in this world who do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do.