Yesterday my parents had just alighted an empty train in Sydney when another new passenger discovered a wallet on a seat nearby. The boy didn't want anything to do with it so my mother took care of the wallet- knowing that if she handed it in to authorities they wouldn't necessarily have the time or impetus to follow it up and return it to it's rightful owner. The wallet held a few bankcards, a large sum of cash and a foreign driver's license.
When my parents arrived at our place last night I'd already done a white pages search and called the 3 people with the same surname as the bankcard. One was a family is Brisbane. One was a mother in North Sydney who hadn't travelled on the train in years and one was her son, of the same name, that hadn't lost his wallet but whose father had those same initials but had passed away some years ago. We came to the conclusion that it belonged to none of these people.
My mum then discovered a piece of paper with an address and a phone number on it. We called this number and the names were not familiar to the gentleman who answered. Hmmm....
So that gentleman was the only link we had although we did think of another couple of options:
* Visit our local branch where either of the bankcards came from and ask them to call the cardholder (as they couldn't probably give us his number), or
* Contact the other two numbers we found inside the wallet.
As you can tell- we were desperate to get this back to the owner before he began cancelling cards!
The gentleman we called did put us in touch with another gentleman of a similar name (it was a long Indian name that was on the bankcards). Still no luck- so we called him back and I gave him another of the names inside the wallet - on the driver's license.
About 15 minutes later he called me back. "I know who it is madam! The man will call you now! He is a Hindu priest from Sydney!"We were getting somewhere!
Well- when the 'owner' called I asked for some identifying cards that I might find, is DOB (that was on his license) and anything else that might identify him. He directed me to a Hindi prayer card toward the back of the wallet. Bingo! This was his wallet.
He directed me to open his wallet, remove the cash (well over $150) and keep it. I told him I'd do no such thing. So this morning we packaged it up and sent it off in a registered parcel to the temple where the owner is the priest.
Apparently, according to the gentleman who helped us, we will have long lives. Now that's a blessing!
As my mother used to say "I'd rather be poor and honest... (rather than rich and dishonest)."
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