I lost my wallet in what was acknowledge to be a really bad neighborhood in New Orleans, while on vacation there. (Really a bummer to lose something like that on vacation.) I martialed my forces, talked to AAA, and got traveler’s checks and …I don’t remember what they did about my driver’s license, this was a long time ago. And when I got back to Denver, there was a package with my wallet in it, complete with cash, traveler’s checks, ID–everything. They could have helped themselves to some cash in order to pay the postage but I don’t think they did.
The flip side: I waited for two hours at the DMV to get license plates for a car I’d just bought. When I went up to pay, my wallet had been lifted. It happened at some point while I was waiting. I had no way to pay and I was leaving town the next day–no driver’s license (again!), no permanent tags on my car, no way to get cash from the bank…and I had just wasted two hours on a day that suddenly had even more tasks I had to accomplish.
I found three, but I wonder how many more I’ve passed by. The last one I found had been lying in the street for at least two hours.
The ID I found today had a picture of its owner. She’s really cute. I think that my brain just registered “pretty face” and looked around for the source of it.
I lost my wallet recently on the DC metro. It was an exercise in frustration, and after over a week, I’d given it up for lost. This was particularly frustrating, because I had a trip out of town scheduled, and the wallet did not turn up before I left.
However, on my trip, I got an e-mail from my school’s police department. Someone had found my wallet and mailed it back to my school! It was almost completely intact, and I was so thankful to have it back, but had no ability to give the person a reward. The police had disposed of the packaging and put the wallet in what looked like an evidence bag!
The only thing missing from the wallet was the single dollar in cash I had in it. I don’t know if the person who mailed the wallet took it, or if someone else did. I hope the person who mailed the wallet did, since even that wouldn’t cover postage.
Two I can think of:
For one, I didn’t at that moment (there was no cash in the wallet, and your average citizen doesn’t take credit cards), but I picked up the wallet at his house where he was doing home repair projects. So on my way home, I stopped by Home Depot (or Lowe’s or one of those stores that does take credit cards), bought a gift card, and mailed it to him with a thank you note.
Another woman found a bag of mine (it had been stolen, nothing of transferable value was in it, but there was an envelope with my address on it), and she admired something that was inside the bag. When I picked it up, I also gave her her own version of the thing she admired.
They saved me a lot of time, trouble, and pain - I appreciated it.
Funny you should ask this. One of the columnists in the Sun-Times (Mark Brown) asked the same question a year or so ago, and printed my response. Basically, I do not expect to be offered a reward. That’s the way I was taught and those were the rules of my neighborhood and upbringing. Would I offer a reward myself if somebody returned my wallet? Yes. Would I expect an offer of a reward if I returned a wallet? No. Would I accept a reward? Absolutely not.
The only thing I ask for is a “thank you.” One guy pissed me off when I found his ATM card in the machine, with the machine still asking “Would you like another transaction?” I could have said yes and taken a couple hundred dollars out of his account. I tracked down his name in the phone book, called him up, and went over to HIS place to return the ATM card. He just opened the screen door, grabbed the card, and shut the door without even a simple “thank you.” Now that did piss me off, I must admit.
Not a wallet, but a few weeks ago I was going home via a riverfront bike path, when I saw a gym bag in the bushes on the side of the trail. My first thought was “I can’t believe some asshole just threw his bag here” but then I saw some clothes, and some toiletries, and I realized what had happened. Someone had stolen this bag, and brought it out to the woods to look through it for valuables. I picked up a few of the things, and found a book of address labels, which had a phone number, so I called it. Sure enough, the bag had been taken from a nearby restaurant while its owner went to the bathroom.
He told me the only thing important in it was some sheet music, so I hunted through the woods until I found it. At that point I wasn’t going to just leave all his stuff there so I grabbed as much of it as I could find (never found his checkbook, though) put it all back in the bag and took it back to my office. He lived in Virginia but worked nearby so I dropped it off at his office a few days later. He wasn’t in that day, and he never offered a reward and I probably wouldn’t have taken one anyway.
I think I have mentioned this before. I found an envelope with $3300 and a deposit slip, at the time I was unemployed and really could have used the money. The place I found the envelope was only a few blocks from the owner listed on the deposit slip so I returned it. It belonged to an older couple and the money was from the sale of items that had belonged to their son, he was killed in an auto accident months earlier. They gave me a nice reward and gave me a temporary job doing some yard work for them. They became good friends and I cherish the time I knew them.
I lost a wallet once, it was found missing about $200 and my driver’s license. My social security card, military ID and a credit card were still in it. Whoever found it turned it into the Navy base where I was stationed and I got it back about a month after I lost it.
I left my blackberry in a cab last winter. As soon as I realized, I called it and the driver answered. He said he was glad I called because he couldn’t figure out how to work the thing to get in touch with me.
He came to my office a few hours later to drop it off and I gave him a twenty because that’s all the cash I had. I would have given him two twenties if I had it on me.
Of course since I had given up my cash, I couldn’t pay for a cab ride home so I had to hoof it. I need the exercise anyway…
Of the several times I’ve lost my wallet I’ve had it returned to me once. I gave the lady, who googled me to find me, an ivy plant that I had just bought and potted. I didn’t have much money, and couldn’t afford to give her the ten or so dollars I had in the wallet.
Once I found a wallet packed to the gills with cash and credit cards. The lady gave me $50. I really, really needed the money, so I accepted it with the one of the most grateful thank yous I’ve ever vocalized.
Whenever I’ve found a wallet, checkbook, anything, I’ve made every effort to find the owner. I know how stressful it is to lose something like that. It’s horrible.
ETA: I really like your story, Jolly Roger. The roses were a sweet thing to do!
My roommate told me a story about a coworker last week that lost her wallet. She didn’t know where it was until she got a phone call from a homeless guy that said he found it. He recommend that he meet her to get it. Under a bridge in Chicago. Where he’d be waiting with some friends.
The worst thing? She DID IT. A young, attractive woman in her late 20’s / early 30’s. Just in case, she brought a friend. Another young, attractive woman.
Lucky for both of them, the guy was honest and gave her the wallet back (she gave him $50). The cash was gone, but still inside were her social security card and a copy of her birth certificate :smack:
There was so much wrong with that story, I didn’t know how to respond.
I was loading some heavy items into the back of a minivan and put my wallet on the bumper. Naturally, I forgot to pick it back up so it fell off the vehicle on the street on the ride home. A very nice couple found the wallet and tried to call me on the telephone number pre-printed on my checks. I’ve never actually had my correct phone number printed on checks on purpose. Identity theft being all the rage, I thought it would afford me some protection from yahoos who stole my purse. Ha! Fortunately, they took the initiative to drive to my house and return it to me that evening. I sent them a nice gift card to a local restaurant for their trouble.
I also sent a gift card to a family that helped my gf when she hit a dog on the way home from work one night. They took her in, helped her call the police, and also helped her identify the dog owner so that the owners could pay for the damage to my car.
Not a wallet but a checkbook. It was found in a schoolyard some ten miles away (I have no idea how it got there) and mailed to me by the teacher to whom it had been turned in to. I sent a check for $20 for which I was effusively thanked, and she spent it on some class treat.
When I was in college I found a wallet and returned it. No reward, but we were both poor college students so that was not unexpected.
Once lost it in an abandoned gold mine in Central BC. I was photographing the structure and related, remaining artifacts for a museum project.
When I got back to the hotel, a message was waiting for me. A man who had worked at the gold mine in the 1940’s had arrived, about 20 minutes after I left. He found the wallet, and examining the contents found my visa bill reciept for the hotel.
I met him in a local bar and he returned it with about $60 in cash and all my cards intact. I set up a $100 bar tab for him (with out him knowing).
I also got a great interview about the mine at its “heyday”!
Well worth the “reward” in many ways!
I keep a scrap of leather from that “magic wallet” in my current wallet… and every time it has been lost and even stolen once, it has been returned…
What a touching story! I actually got a little teary-eyed, thinking about the sweet old lady, just wanting someone to pray for her, and then imagining the delight she must have felt when she got the roses…
I’ve found about a dozen wallets and 3 purses and a hundred cell phones in the last 2 years. (I drive cab on the week-ends)
The only time I’ve ever been offered anything was once.
A dude left his glasses and cell phone in my back seat. 10 minutes after I drove away, he called the number and asked me to return them to the Denny’s I dropped him at.
He gave me a $5 tip which I greatly appreciated.
I go out of my way to return the stuff and I can’t believe how many times people are complete dicks about it.
One time this professor looked through the wallet I handed him (with one eye giving me the stare down) and he said “ok, everything appears to be in order, would you like $5?”
One year at Christmas time, when my sister was young, she found a wallet at the place where we were buying our tree. It was stuffed with money. The found the owner by calling her over the loudspeaker, and she offered my sister a reward, which she turned down.
A couple of days later, the lady and her limo driver showed up at our little apartment in Queens with a huge gourmet fruit/cheese/etc. basket as a thank you. I thought that was really sweet of her. She could easily afford it, but she’d offered a reward already and had it turned down and she could have just left it at that.
Found a nice Coach wallet in a cab about a month ago. I Googled the girl, but her email address bounced. I called her credit card company and asked them to cancel the card, call her, and have her call me. She did, and she gave me an address (she was from out of town) to mail it to. She said she’d pay me back for the shipping, and I was all, “whatever,” I just wanted to get it back to her. My return address was on the package when I sent it, so she knew where to send the reimbursement if she wanted to do so.
She still hasn’t sent me a check or anything, and I don’t mind, but I kind of wonder why she would offer to reimburse me if she wasn’t going to do it.
I once lost my driver’s license. I had it in my jeans pocket, along with a little cash, while bicycling around looking at garage sales. It must have worked it’s way out of the pocket.
The lady who found it mailed it to me, along with a couple of religious tracts(Church of the Nazarene). In her note she said she hoped I didn’t mind the tracts. I wrote back, thanking her for returning the license, and saying, no, of course I didn’t mind the tracts. They were the nice kind anyway, not like Chick tracts or something.
