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Community Corner

If You Turned In The Lost Wallet, This Column Is Dedicated to You

Columnist Christine Wolf explains why a community is stronger when when neighbors look out for one another.

My neighbor, Amy, asked if I’d write about an experience she'd recently had. She hoped I'd share it with Patch readers. "I just sent you a quick email about it," she told me, "but I can't say enough about what the experience meant to me. I think people need to hear about things like this." Read on and you'll see why.

Aside from being an architect and an artist, Amy's someone I'd also describe as kind, warm, thoughtful and, above all else, filled with positive energy. Whenever I see her dashing from her front door to her car, I never see her empty-handed: she's always loaded down, carrying huge files and items for work...or groceries for friends and family...or a yoga mat...or a holiday treat for my family. As another one of our neighbors once said (with pure admiration and astonishment),  "I get tired just watching her...I don't think she ever slows down."

Lately, though, Amy’s been forced to slow down due to a bad upper respiratory virus. While she's kept up with her commitments, she's not her usual peppy self.

Before I go any further, here’s the email Amy sent about her recent experience:

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Subject: great neighborhood!!!

Hi Christine, don't know if this kind of thing gets mentioned in Evanston Patch, or maybe I should just post it on the Nichols Neighborhood listserve....

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Last night, foggy with a terrible cold, I was gathering my usual load of stuff from the car, heading toward the house. My bag was open, and I even thought to myself, "I'd better not drop anything.."----went home, and 20 min. later got a phone call from the Evanston police, asking if I had lost a purple wallet.  I checked, and indeed I had!  Apparently, within minutes of my leaving the car, some kids on bikes picked up the dropped wallet, handed it over to a nearby adult, who promptly brought it in to the police station on Elmwood!  Everything was in it---cash, credit cards, driver's license, etc.---WHAT GREAT NEIGHBORS!!!

None of the heroes who helped out left their names with the police, so I'd like to thank them here!  Thank you so much!  Amy 

Everyone in this scenario warms my heart, and everyone in this scenario deserves thanks -- from the kids who found the wallet…to the parents who drove it to the police station…to the officer who immediately called the owner…to Amy herself for taking that final step to publicly share her gratitude.

So often I hear about the loss of American neighborhoods...how everyone's shut in, keeping to themselves, completely unaware of others around them. How wonderful it is to hear about neighbors reaching out for no other reason than to do the right thing. 

If you’re the kids who turned in the wallet, this column is dedicated to you. You did the right thing taking it to someone who’d get it back to the owner. You started a chain of good deeds and ended up making many people -- including the readers of this column proud of you and happy. The truth is, we all want to know about the good things going on in our world, and you made some very good things happen. Do you realize what Amy’s life would have been like if that wallet was left on the ground? Someone else might have taken all the contents and used them. Amy might have had to make a bunch of phone calls trying to find the wallet, then even more phone calls to cancel her credit cards and her bank accounts. She might have spent lots of time trying to remember what was in there in the first place --  like photos and receipts and gift cards and other little things that might mean nothing to anyone else but her. There might have been a piece of string her father gave her before he’d passed away. Maybe there’d been a note from her daughter the day she’d left for college. Maybe there’d been a list of all the books she’d want to read someday when she wasn’t working so hard…

You just never know.  What I do know, though, is that you did a wonderful thing for getting that wallet back to Amy. We’re lucky to have YOU as neighbors.

Now if only those kids could find a kidney for another wonderful neighbor of mine, the one who just started dialysis...

Know a good-deed story in your neighborhood? Please share it in the comments section.

 



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