Got home from the grocery store a little while ago, reached for my purse and the bags, and - no purse. I'd left it in the cart when I got into my car. So, very very fast driving back to the store, run inside "Has anybody turned in a purse?" "No". Back outside, futile checking of the cart racks as if I'd just missed it last time, and headed home. Gotta cancel credit card, bank card, cheques, oh, no, my kids' bank account numbers are written on cards in my wallet, phone's cheap but I just put $100 on it, so that's gone, spare car key - does this mean I need to get new keys? driver's license, golly, insurance and registration for my car, oh no oh no oh no.....

Get back to my house, and see my daughter waiting for me on the front porch. "Oh, did someone call?" (hoping, hoping...) "Naw, some guy came by and dropped it off".

Sometimes I chafe at living in this very little town with everybody up in everybody's business. Today, though, I love the place.

That is wonderful. Quite restores your faith in human nature. What a nice man.

I konw the feeling, many years ago my credit/store card folder fell out of my handbag just after I got out of my car. I only noticed that it was missing when I tried to buy something. I went home and checked to see if I have dropped it there, no. Then I telephoned the police to ask if it had been handed in, yes. An elderly man had gone out of his way to hand it in. The police gave me his name and address so I was able to thank him properly with a bottle of his favourite tipple and some flowers for his wife.

There are still some decent people about.

My brother and I were the helpful strangers a couple months ago
We were just about to park in the supermarket carpark and spotted a wallet on the road. Picked it up and it was full of the normal cards you have plus a couple hundred dollars. There was no phone number but there was an address so we kept going and delivered it to a very happy young bloke. He hadn't even realised it was missing at that point - he'd only just gotten home and thinks he'd left it on top of his card when he'd packed the groceries in.
That was our good deed and warm and fuzzy moment for the day.

We live close to a main road, and so far this year, we have been the "helpful strangers" 11 times. Began on New Years Day with a couple towing a boat and blew two tyres just near us... so far, it has been tyres 3 times, needing jumper leads 3 times, needed a jack twice, and twice, someone hitting a roo.
It's always nice to be able to help.

Couldn't have said it better.

Many years ago I dropped my wallet somewhere in a small Norfolk town. Phoned the local police more in hope than expectation and found that it had been handed in.
Upon collection found it was almost intact........the £40 cash it had held, was missing. Ah well, I accept the miracle of it being handed in, the cash still being there would have come under "impossibility".

You can't have everything!

The cash really is the least of the loss, isn't it? It's all the other stuff which would be fairly useless to a thief but which hold your entire life that you don't want to lose.

I once had my suitcase stolen. I don't really own any clothes of high enough quality to be resell-able, so unless the thief was a woman my size, or knew one, they got nothing useful from it. However, it was an enormous problem for me, and I still mourn one perfect blue sweater.....

I stupidly left my wallet in a public restroom and didn't realize it was gone until about an hour later. I went back and, of course, it was gone and wasn't turned in so I knew all was lost. Later than evening I received a telephone call from a teenage boy (I'm assuming it was a teenager here) and he said I was the winner of a cash amount of $27.15, then he laughed and hung up. After a confusing moment, I remembered that was the exact amount I had in my wallet. After cancelling all my credit cards, getting a new driver's license and crying over personal items that were in my wallet that were gone forever, I went on with life. About a month later, I received another call from the store where I left my wallet stating they had found it in a trash can. The only thing missing was the cash and a book of stamps. Everything else was intact. It made me wonder what prompted them to return the wallet that much later with everything still in it to the same place they got it from, minus the money.

My husband left his wallet on the minibus going to town. We got off and immediately realised it was gone, retraced our steps but the minibus had already left. We went to the Police Station, which was not our local one. Very depressed we got on a returning bus and got off at our original stop. The front bus in the line waiting to go back to town was the one in which the wallet was left! The minibus driver shouted out to us that he had found it and handed it in to the police station. Since that route has about 50 drivers it was a big co-incidence that he happened to be the front one as we arrived back. Everything was in the wallet and he refused a reward, so we had to get the address from the police and send him a cheque. Minibus drivers here are not too well off. We were lucky to find such an honest one.
Even more amazing was an incident in India. I left the camera in a pedal rickshaw. For that we did not even bother to report its loss, as the drivers are really the poorest, and he could probably feed his family for a month on the proceeds. As we returned from our trip we met him
He had spent hours looking for us to return the camera , and again, refused any reward, we had to really insist. Life is good sometimes!

In my job (security guard in an education institute), I receive a lot of lost property. I have had $850 cash handed in, just in a small plastic bag- the frantic owner had dropped it in a carpark and turned up about 20 minutes later. The finder declined to leave her contact details. By law, any items unclaimed within three months can be claimed by the finder.

We get a wallet every day or so, and lots of phones, but the main items are USBs (memory sticks); 4-5 a day is the norm. I have taken it upon myself to reunite USB and owner, so I open them up, searching for resumes, student numbers, etc, and email/call them. Many are extremely grateful, because they have their entire semester's work stored there, or have an urgent assignment on it.

Unfortunately, not all have contact details on them, so the owner cannot be found. I would advise anyone here that uses USBs, SD cards or portable hard drives to put some sort of personal details on them- a simple file named 'if found.doc', with a phone number/email address would suffice.

I have had some rather strange stuff handed in, too. A pair of pink spangly high-heeled shoes (claimed by a male!), a steering-wheel, dresses (not sure how you would not notice you were missing it), oodles of reading glasses and lots of umbrellas.

I was doing a course for work at the local college back in the UK. Went to the washroom and took off my rings to wash my hands. Got home (45 mins away) and realised what I had done. Too late to call the college, but did so the next day - the rings had been handed in. Unfortunately, no name was left to allow me to thank the honest person.
My rings always stay on now.