Finders is not keepers for Strathmore resident

Laureen F. Guenther  

Times Contributor     

 

It was an ordinary Friday afternoon, and Flocerfina Whieldon was parking at the Ridge Road Tim Hortons. She saw something on the ground in front of her car, and when she got out, she saw it was a wallet.

“I can see some money and some (bank) cards, but I did not open (it),” Flocerfina says. Fina, as family and friends call her, didn’t think about what to do next. 

“I went straight to the Tim Hortons,” she said. 

She gave the wallet to a staff member, who thanked her, and said someone had called a missing wallet. Fina didn’t hang around to see what happened.

“I just bought my coffee and I left,” she said.

Asked what motivated her to hand it in instead of keeping it, Fina says, “that’s the way it is, that’s how I am. I’d rather take it in than keep it.” 

She says, “you don’t enjoy using it if it’s not yours.”

A few minutes later, when Fina called her husband John, saying, “I found a wallet,” he didn’t have to ask whether she’d kept it.

“I knew automatically, she handed it in right away,” he says. “We wouldn’t have thought anything less of her.” John said. “The important thing for all of us is that (the wallet owner) got it back … the loss of money is traumatic to say the least … it’s hard to replace all of your identification.”

John points out that Tim Hortons management also deserves some credit. 

“We know the owners, Lindsay and Melanie Rohl,” he says. “They set the right example for their staff … you can hand it in and not have any negative thoughts, thinking ‘oh, what’s going to happen here.’ ”

Just as surrendering lost valuables is as ordinary for Fina as drinking Tim Horton’s coffee, and for Tim Hortons staff as making it, it’s the ordinary thing for most Strathmore residents to do, according to Constable Shannon White of the Strathmore RCMP.

“It’s not uncommon for the residents of Strathmore to do that, whether they return (the lost wallet) to the business or to the detachment,” White says. 

And Strathmore finders don’t skim out the cash first. 

“When wallets are turned in, they’re usually intact.”

In her experience, White says, “there’s lots of honest people in Strathmore who are community-minded, who return wallets with credit cards and cash inside. Then we find the owners — who are very happy.

“It shows what kind of people we have here.”

As John Whieldon says, “it’s not about reward or recognition. It’s just the right thing to do.”