I wrote Monday about the moral delimnia I had last Friday night. Yes, like a few people admitted, I had a moment where I thought to myself, “Keep it! Keep it!” But I knew I couldn’t do that. So I did the following:
1. Tried to call the phone number on the checks. It just rang, no answering machine, no voice mail.
2. Realized that there is a police sub-station across the street. Thinking I could just give it to them, I drove over there with it. It was closed. Several patrol cars parked out front, no one around.
3. There is a grocery store in the same shopping center that often has an HPD officer there – I’ll go and give it to them. Nope, only a rent-a-cop there, and he seemed sort of shady to me.
4. Went back to the office and called the HPD non-emergency number. Explained my situation. She tells me to “just hang on to it”; I tell her that I think the police should handle it and she asks if I want her to send a patrol car to me or if I want to drive it to a different sub-station. It’s late, I’m hungry, and I want to get home – so I’ll take it there myself.
5. Drive to what I think is the other sub-station. It’s a Harris County Sheriff’s office instead, and the doors are locked. Two men sitting inside, look up at me as if they have absolutely no interest in coming to open the door. I understand that they have the door locked because the place is in what Chelsey & I fondly refer to as “the hood” and it’s not a safe place to be, but … hello? Do I *look* like a criminal? One of the men finally opens the door, listens to my saga of finding the briefcase, and tells me to just hang on to it. They can’t take it because when I told him where I found it at he said, “that’s not us, that’s HPD.” Isn’t Houston part of Harris County? Why doesn’t this stuff overlap?
6. I decide to just take it home with me. It’s getting late, I’m tired and hungry, no one obviously wants to help me out. Both the police and the sheriff have told me to take it home. So I call Brian back at the office and ask him to make a sign for me (I don’t want to drive back there and make it myself) and post it on the door. Your basic average, “Hey, did you lose your laptop? Call this cell phone number” sign. Then I waited.
Who would have thought that trying to do the right thing would take so much effort? I just didn’t want the bag to be stolen by someone else. If I had left it there and it was stolen, I would have felt really bad knowing I could have prevented it.
Sunday at noon, the cell phone rang. It was the owner of the laptop. He was beyond thankful that I had picked it up for him. He thought he had left it in a co-worker’s truck. Turns out that they had been in Galveston on a boat all day, had a few beers, and when they got back to the office he had sat it on the ground and forgotten to pick it back up. He was the person I saw leaving the parking lot as I came out – so it had only been sitting there for a few minutes. Add to this the fact that the laptop itself was a replacement laptop, loaned to him because his regular one was stolen from a rental car two weeks ago. The check was also a replacement for the one stolen in the other laptop bag. He said the first thing he thought when he discovered his friend didn’t have his laptop was, “Oh no, this can’t be happening again…” When he got to the office he saw the sign and called. I offered to bring the bag to him after lunch, but he said to just hang on to it. We met up Monday morning and I was able to reunite him with the laptop. It was a very touching, happy reunion. He offered to take me to lunch and I told him he didn’t have to – I only did what I would have wanted someone to do for me. When I got back from lunch on Monday afternoon I found out that he had come back by the office and left an envelope for me with $30 and a note to go out to lunch – his treat. It was more then he needed to do, but I was grateful. Instead of lunch, I bought a copy of Amelie and the tickets to the movie last night. Both of which made me quite happy.