Maybe it’s my age but it is getting harder and harder to remember that time growing up in America when people left their houses and cars unlocked with no worry about crime. In the recent 10 years in Southern California the print and TV media news seems daily to highlight some sort of crime against seniors or some sort of new criminal scheme to cheat seniors out of money. Either we or someone we know has gotten a phony but persuasive email, text or phone call from someone pretending to be an IRS agent about to arrest you if you don’t pay a penalty or a friend in desperate need of immediate cash. Ads are everywhere selling security alarms, cameras or other protection for home or car break-ins, identity theft, credit card fraud and much more.
My own recent experience was consistent with these dire reports. Last October 2022 I parked my car at the Long Beach El Dorado Nature Center for a regular walk with my wife. When we returned to the car, we found someone had used a device to pry open the front door and steal 5 credit cards and some cash from my wife’s hidden purse. The thief had used or tried to use all 5 cards within 30 minutes of when we returned to the car. I filed a police report but got no help from the police. I took my car to the Acura dealer for door lock repair and the dealer representative said he had 3 other customers in the last 48 hours with the same break-in. Because of this and other experiences over the last 10 years in Southern California I have developed a general pervasive apprehension about the goodness of humanity.
Then something happened which has shaken that apprehension in a very good way. Friday morning, May 26, 2023, my friend and I met at my house for a bicycle ride to the Long Beach harbor lighthouse. We first rode to Seal Beach and stopped at Bogart’s coffee shop where we bought a cup of coffee. Then it was on to the Long Beach Lighthouse near the Aquarium of the Pacific. I remembered I had forgotten to bring an energy bar so I stopped at a small convenience store next to the Aquarium to buy one. As I tried to pay with my debit card, the clerk said there was a $.50 charge for the card so I got my bike packet from my biking jersey pocket, put my card back and paid $3.00 cash.
After a short rest break we rode to a Greek restaurant in Seal Beach for lunch. As I reached for my bike packet, it wasn’t there. Thoughts started flying in my mind. I suspected I had dropped it at the convenience shop and began speculating about what might be happening. Someone was using my debit card to buy stuff or worse using it to access my checking account. Or someone just took the $35.00 I was carrying in cash and pitched the packet which could have exposed my personal identity information. No positive thought came to me as I have lost a lot of trust in human decency with recent reported negative changes in society’s morals. Immediately I phoned my bank and canceled and deactivated the card and beat myself up mentally for being so careless. Another example of Murphy’s Law of carelessness and bad consequences.
I could not get the bike packet loss out of my mind so after the ride I drove 11 miles (35 minutes) to the shop near the Aquarium and the kid working there said no one had turned in any lost items on Friday. I resigned myself to the loss, sucked it up, and thought it was luckily a small loss compared to my wife’s recent loss. I put it out of my mind, except to admit my careless lapse to my wife. After our experience with the car break-in, we accepted a repeat experience.
Saturday morning after breakfast we read Our Daily Bread devotion titled Small but Great and quoting Zechariah 4:10. “Who dares despise the day of small things?” Unexpectedly what happened in the next moment showed the application of this teaching. After the devotion, my wife said she was going to the mailbox to leave some letters. I then went upstairs to shave when all of a sudden I heard my wife run upstairs saying guess what I found, guess what I found. She pounded on the door and I thought she had a winning lottery ticket. When she showed me the packet that I lost, I paused for a few seconds in disbelief and said wow, where did you find it. She told me she had found it in the mailbox, with my debit card, cash, and photocopy of my driver’s license, Medicare, and Medicare Supplemental cards I had in my packet. No note.
Someone had found my bike packet at or near the convenience shop, had looked at the photocopy of my address on my driver’s license, and in an act of kindness had driven 11 miles to my house and left the packet intact in my mailbox. Wow! No cash was missing and instead of turning it over to someone, the person was a true Good Samaritan, went above and beyond, and brought it to me. We said Praise the Lord because that was the last thing either of us could imagine someone doing. How could I ever express my gratitude for such a kind and caring act?
Today’s story is an attempt to do that and I am sharing it with you today and will be sending it out to my bicycle group, my family, and friends. I want to share this as a token of my gratitude to that person and very much wish I could thank the person directly. That person boosted my faith in humanity.
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