Saturday, May 22, 2010

My Lucky Day


Saturday the weatherman called for rain and so my husband and I decided we'd head to Roanoke after lunch.

In Daleville, we stopped off at Lord Botetourt High School for the 50th anniversary open house. I didn't know we were going by so I did not have my camera, unfortunately.

The school had been cleaned and spruced up for the big event. It's a much larger building than it was when my husband and I attended. He graduated in 1977 and I graduated in 1981. They built on sometime after I finished.

The attendance was not spectacular at the event, perhaps because it was pouring rain, but I had a nice time touring the halls and looking at five decades of photos.

I also saw two of my favorite teachers, Dee Sheffer and Sue Obenshain whose last name is now Goodpasture. Ms. Sheffer taught me English and Ms. Obenshain taught math. I am quite fond of them both and so I was very glad to see them. My husband visited with a few of his former teachers, too.

He then spent time looking at FFA (Future Farmers of America) displays. He was very active in that when he was young.

From there we headed to Roanoke. While we were in a store, I won't say which one, I turned down an empty aisle. In the middle of the aisle lay a sealed bank envelope. There was absolutely no one in sight, so I swiftly knelt and picked up the item.

I could tell from the feel of it as I put it in my pocket that there was a good deal of money in this envelope. I rushed over to my husband and told him I needed to go to customer service right away. "I found a lot of money," I whispered.

We headed for customer service. As we hurried, we passed several store employees and I stopped to ask for a manager. One of them spoke up and said he was a manager. I told him what I had found and he ushered me over to customer service.

Together we watched the clerk count out the money and then take it to a safe place. I won't say exactly how much it was or in what denominations, but it was in the hundreds.

The manager thanked me for being honest and turning in the money. "I am sure someone will be looking for this," he said. I did not leave my name or anything and I wonder in retrospect if I should have. Oh well.

I have never in my life found such a large amount of cash. In fact, I think the most I have ever found was a $5 bill in a parking lot once. Maybe it wasn't so much my lucky day as someone else's. At least I hope so. I do hope they get their money back.

This event discombobulated me a little bit. I was very nervous handling this cash that did not belong to me, even though I was doing nothing wrong. After we left customer service we went back to the area where I found the money, thinking we might see someone frantically searching, but we did not.

After that, we spent several hours shopping, ending up at Sam's Club where we had a very long wait in line. Sam's is never a good idea on a Saturday but sometimes you just can't help it.

As we headed to dinner, I decided to call the answering machine at home and check messages.

"Hi, this message is for Anita. This is Vicki at the Vitamin Shoppe. We had a raffle drawing today and you won a prize! Please come by and get it. We will hold it until Wednesday."

Well! I don't win things very often - about as often as I find envelopes full of money. This was turning into quite an eventful day. We weren't far from the Vitamin Shoppe (which recently opened near the IHOP at Valley View) so after we ate dinner we headed over there.



The clerk handed me a bag full of goodies. Inside I found a cup, several mixes of a milk shake for women, a personal lubricant (hmm...hmm) acidophilus pills, DVDs about health, and natural sleeping pills.

While this was not quite as exciting as the greenbacks, it seemed like a nice way to end the day.

But since I was having a lucky day, we decided to go three for three. I stopped at Food Lion and purchased a lottery ticket.

What did I win?

Well, so far only $1 on a scratch ticket. But one of the tickets is for a drawing that has yet to be held.

Maybe my luck will hold!

5 comments:

  1. I was in the sporting goods store in Roanoke last year and found a man's wallet in a chair. I think he had sat in the chair and the wallet slipped out of his pocket. It had money inside so I took it to customer service manager. You have to wonder if the people that lose money ever DO get it back when it's turned in. Oh well.... at least we did our part, right Anita?

    Di

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  2. Having been on the other end of things, I'm thankful there are people like you out there! Good karma :-)

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  3. Good karma!!!! I hope it continues...

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  4. It upsets me when you see people just throw out lost and found things. I tried to take care of something recently as the person who lost it obviously valued it (and it was valuable)....my workplace (who has to remain nameless) decided to lie to me about putting it somewhere safe and just tossed it in with everything else (where a fellow employee likely stole it). :-(

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  5. What goes around comes around.

    Shortly before I got that free horse, I found out about some starving horses. Kurt and I brought the owner over some grain. It was not an easy thing to do, feed someone else's horses when mine are expensive enough. But then look at the luck I had! Not to mention that the best reward is feeling good about yourself.

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