Roxanne James went in to the Santa Fe restaurant in Fort Payne, Alabama on October 13, 2010 to order a meal to go. She was seated at the bar of the restaurant and had a 15 minute wait. She sipped on a complimentary glass of ice water and played a game on her phone while she waited.
The next day she noticed that she didn’t have her wallet. Panic set in. She searched, she called the places she’d been, and finally, she was informed that it had been turned in at Santa Fe. When she went to retrieve it, all contents of the wallet was account for. Turns out the bar manager, Michael Swann, was the person to turn in Roxanne’s wallet.
This isn’t as rare as it seems
When Roxanne told her story on Facebook, others began to chime in with their positive stories about fully returned purses and wallets. In addition, Frances, the manager at Santa Fe in Fort Payne, has stated that they have items left there quite often, some with large amounts of money but she hasn’t heard of an instance yet where items weren’t returned to their respectful owners.
I have also had an instance where, about ten years or so ago, I went grocery shopping early in the morning at Wal-Mart. I had just gotten off my second job and was exhausted. After loading groceries into my car, I pushed the buggy to the designated area, not realizing that I’d left my purse in it. A cart pusher turned it in to the service desk. All contents were intact.
Why don’t we hear more about these instances?
Because the public in general thrives on negativity. Hearing about bad things happening makes people feel better about themselves and lucky that these bad things didn’t happen to them. But it doesn’t mean that good things don’t happen. Last week, I saw a young man help a woman pick up items from a bag which had split open, spilling her groceries out. When I used to work for an oil company, I would see people down on their luck and needing a couple of gallons of gas. More often than not, a stranger would come up and pay for that person some gasoline. But these things don’t make the news. And the people who do these things don’t do it for the glory or attention, they do it because they are kind people.
DeKalb is full of kindness
I love where I live. Despite some bad things (and bad behavior) I’ve witnessed over the years, the kindness I’ve seen in people far outweigh the bad. I think that goes for a lot of places. The general public isn’t given enough credit when it comes to expecting people to do the right thing.
A big thank you!
Roxanne gives bar manager Michael Swann and the employees of Santa Fe restaurant in Fort Payne a huge thank you for returning her belongings. “Everything was in there–I am so grateful to those folks!” she says.
Source: Facebook, messaging interview
