JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Christmas nightmare was averted thanks to a Good Samaritan who was not only observant but also caring and compassionate.
“I know there are more good people in the world than there are bad people. And this confirms it,” said Donna Cooper of San Marco.
She recently lost her wallet outside a Jacksonville grocery store and thought someone might find it and steal her identity and credit cards.
But her story has a happy ending right before Christmas.
“It was such a relief and I cried,” she said.
Her story begins in the parking lot of Freshfields Farms grocery store on University Boulevard where she unknowingly dropped her wallet inside a shopping cart while placing her groceries in her car.
Athens Café owner Sam Savvidis is the man who discovered the wallet while using the same cart days later.
“It was caught stuck between the folding metal of the shopping cart,” Savvidis said. “As I was moving through the aisles, that’s when I noticed it. I didn’t notice is right away.”
And Cooper didn’t realize her wallet was missing until she got back home.
She called the grocery store and asked if seen it but no one had. She returned to the parking lot to look for it but still couldn’t find it. Fearing someone might have it, she immediately canceled her credit cards.
Three days went by and Cooper called the store one more time to see if someone found her wallet.
A manager picked up the phone and asked, “Are you, Donna? Because they knew my name, I knew they had my wallet.”
She came back to the store to pick up her wallet and that’s when she learned Savvidis found her wallet and gave to a store manager. But the wallet had a little something extra.
“Hidden inside it was this business card from the gentleman. I’ll read the back of it to you. The note says I found your wallet and gave it to the store manager. It had $40 when I gave it to him.”
“I needed to let her know there was so much cash in the wallet and to make sure it would be there once it was handed to her,” Savvidis said.
The cash was there and so was her identification and credit cards. Crisis averted.
Savvidis said when Cooper offered to pay him for finding her wallet, he only requested she do the same for someone else if she ever finds a lost wallet.