Tuesday I had to go over to Newark to visit a client to provide training for the new CMS (content management system) we installed for their website. The visit was uneventful. I wrapped things up and left, then called for a taxi and went outside to wait for it. The neighborhood isn’t a terribly rough one (at least not by East Coast standards), but it’s adjacent to a somewhat ghetto-ish one.

So I was sitting on one of those big tree planters futzing around with the camera on my new iPod and must’ve missed my cell phone slipping out of the side pocket of my purse. I got home, settled back down in front of my computer, and got back to work, never realizing that my phone was missing.

A couple of hours later my land line rang. I didn’t even look at the Caller ID. The man on the other end said he had no idea who he was calling, but he’d found a cell phone over by [redacted] and since my number was in it he thought I might be able to tell him who it belonged to because he’d like to return it.

I told him that I most certainly did know who it belonged to—me!—then I told him how I thought I’d lost it. I thanked him for his honesty and told him that it was always heartening to to be reminded how many good people there still are in the world. That did it—all of a sudden he got all choked up, told me he was “just trying to please the Lord”, and then began telling me his story.

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