As 2010 drew to its close, Gilford Mongoyak, Jr. was driving near Sam & Lee's Restaurant in his hometown of Barrow when he saw a suitcase lying in the road. Gilford does not own a car, but he had rented this one so that he could take care of some year-end business. Before returning it, he thought that he would just take a nice little evening drive about Barrow and that is what he was doing when he came upon the suitcase.
There were other people out and about, on the road, walking, driving, but no one paid any attention to the suitcase. Gilford drove right past it himself, but then decided that he ought to check it out. He backed up, picked up the suitcase and examined the outside of it.
It carried no identification, so he drove home and took the suitcase inside and showed it to his wife. They did not want to open it, but they did want to return it to its rightful owner and so they opened it up to see if there was any ID inside.
~~~
My hands kind of started really shaking with that kind of money right there," he says. "We say, really, what should we do? So my wife and I decided the best thing to do was to take it to Public Safety (Police Department)."
~~~
So Gilford and his wife took the suitcase to the Police Department. They entered to find a receptionist behind an opaque black window. They stated their business and then a police officer came out to see them.
"You won't believe what I found," Gilford remembers telling him, "look, it's $10,000."
The officer opened up the suitcase and studied the contents
"Then he took a look up at me and said, 'you know what? It's not $10,000. It's $50,000.'"
Click the link to read the whole article. It's nice to know that honesty still abounds up here.
2 comments:
A) Good on him. I remarked to a friend today that I have a very strong sense of whats mine.... and whats not. Heartened to see there are others the same.
B) I rather wish 'Osaka' restaurant was close to home, so I could pointedly never go near the place.
C) There was a similar in my home town when I was a boy. A young man took found money to the police (10K+) who 'kept it while looking for the owner'. After the statutory 90 days were up, and no one claimed the money, the young man went back to police to get the money back .... and was told they had 'misplaced it'. They did offer to take a report and a complaint from him, if he wished.
He did the right thing. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he hadn't.
Unfortunately it's not possible from reading the story to determine why the woman never gave the man a reward. There could be very good reasons or it could be that she's stingy - I hate to judge based on a news item.
I hope the publicity gets the man his own reward from people who hear about it and buy his art.
Post a Comment