The spirit of the season is alive and well and Marlene Eagles is a very happy that it is.
Eagles told The Mercury this past week that she left her wallet in a shopping cart in the Wal-Mart parking lot on the morning of Dec. 6 after wheeling the cart out of the store and over to her vehicle.
Much to her amazement, the wallet was returned to her with the money, identification papers and credit cards intact.
"I had done my shopping and paid in cash, around 10:30 a.m. I wasn't carrying a purse, just the wallet. I took the items out to the car, loaded them up and pushed the cart back to cart corral," she said.
She didn't even realize that her wallet was missing until she received a phone call at home from a Wal-Mart employee, informing her that someone had turned it in to their customer service desk.
"I had driven all the way home, and didn't realize I had left it behind. It wasn't until they phoned that I remembered what I had done. I guess some good, honest soul picked it out of the cart and returned it to Wal-Mart employees," she said.
How easy it would have been for a quick theft, especially since there was a good quantity of cash still in the wallet due to the fact Eagles was in the middle of her Christmas buying schedule.
"I found out that a Wal-Mart employee had opened the wallet, with a witness present, to see if they could discover who owned it," she said.
With lots of identification enclosed, that was the easy part.
"By 11:30, I was back in the store collecting my wallet and found everything and all the money was still there."
The employees said they really didn't recall or recognize who it was who had handed the wallet in, but the unknown good Samaritan certainly earned a huge thank-you from Eagles.
"On my way out, I spotted the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle, so I thought that's what I can do as my gesture of thanks," said Eagles. So the event now became a bit of a pay forward story.
"The Salvation Army will be getting a nice donation from me this year," she said with a laugh.
She said with all the negative news that can be found within a city of this scope, it was heartening to know there were probably plenty of good people who knew how to do the right thing.
"I just say thanks to that person for respecting privacy other people's property, for being so honest and for putting the right spirit back into the season. Whoever you are, I hope you have a wonderful, blessed Christmas," said Eagles, addressing her final comment to the honest, anonymous person.
