You may recall a story in Northern Life about
a year and a half ago about my 12-year-old who had delivered
papers for over a year, saved his money to buy a $500 mountain
bike, and had it stolen from our garage only a few months
later. He was devastated to say the least.
I felt compelled to write you again with
respect to an incident that happened this past weekend, only
one week after having his Samsung MP3 player and Sony
headphones stolen from his locker at school.
My son (now 13) went to the Royal Bank on
Lasalle to deposit a small amount of money into his account to
start saving up to replace the MP3 player.
Upon approaching the bank machine inside the
building, he found another client's card still in the
machine and all the bank information up on the screen for
anyone to see.
Apparently this person was in a hurry or had
other things on his mind when he left the bank, and
inadvertently forgot to complete his transaction and/or
take his card with him.
After a few minutes of waiting for my son to
return to our vehicle, he returned with a gold-coloured client
card in hand. He got in and told me how he went to the bank
machine, saw all the information on the screen and knew the
last person had left without finishing his transaction and even
left the card in the machine.
He said, "I could have taken out enough
money to buy myself another MP3 player and nobody would ever
known it was me, but something inside me
said it was the wrong thing to
do."
Here was an opportunity staring him right in
the face, but knowing what it feels like to have anything
stolen, he knew the right thing to do was to cancel the
transaction, pull out the person's card, and (after talking
to me about it) drop the card in the mail slot inside the bank,
so it could be returned to the rightful owner. He did me
proud.
Later during the day, he was still
questioning why he did what he did knowing there's people
out there who would have "taken the money and
ran."
I reminded him of what a good, honest kid he
was, that he has values and morals, and that he had done the
right thing even though someone else may have done otherwise.
I'm not writing this letter looking for sympathy from any
of your readers, but only to reiterate that there are still
some good, honest kids out there.
And I feel comforted in knowing that I must
be doing something right as a parent.
We attempted to find and call the owner to
let him know what had happened, and that his money and bank
card were safe, but didn't have any luck.
Audrey Dugas
Sudbury