A question of honesty

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On at least three occasions in my life, I have found lost wallets - in two of the cases with considerable amounts of money in them - and on all three occasions, I’ve managed to contact the owners and return them based on information in the wallet.

Ok, so that’s what honest people do, and one could expect the same from anyone. Fact is that in each case, the person who lost the wallet was fortunate that it was found by an honest person because we all know in reality that unless lost overboard in mid-Atlantic, every lost wallet is “found” by someone, but lamentably few "find" their way back to their owner.

When I was 45kg heavier, my XXL jeans had XXL pockets. Now that I've shed the weight, I'm sometimes pressed for pocket space. So, a few days ago, while leaving a restaurant and climbing into my car, my wallet dropped out and into the street. I only realised it about ten minutes later when I stopped outside my home. While I was driving back to the restaurant on the off-chance that someone had found it and handed it in, my wife called me on my mobile phone. A woman had just called (at 23h00) the home number and asked for me. When my wife said I was out, she just said: “tell him he can collect his wallet from so-and-so police station tomorrow morning.” The woman hadn’t identified herself and had just hung up after the call.

The next morning I went to the police station concerned and sure enough, there was my wallet in a ziplock bag as it had been handed in – anonymously – complete with driving licence, credit cards, debit cards and my “whole life”. Whew! What puzzles me (and saddens me slightly) was that the €60 in cash was not there. Someone had found my wallet, gone to the trouble of tracing me (I assume from my visiting card), called my home to tell me where I could collect it, only to steal (that’s the only word there is for it) the cash.

What really interests me is what goes on in the moral conscience of someone who finds a wallet, pockets the cash, but then still goes to the trouble of tracing the owner and handing the non-monetary contents in at a police station.  – AMB

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