My father is getting on in age, and therefore he forgets things sometimes.
Such as the fact that he might have put his wallet on top of my sister’s car Friday evening before heading to the Bridgeport Flyer Diner for a bite to eat.
It didn’t take him long to notice that he didn’t have his wallet and remembered that he put it on top of the car, and they turned around to backtrack the roadways they’d taken: Bridgeport Avenue and then backroads, including Kinlock and Reed Street.
No luck.
My sister jogged the route, and I rode my bike looking for the leather thing that he said had all his cash in it.
No luck again.
I started searching in my sister’s car, reaching into little crevices between the seats to make sure it wasn’t there, while the look of panic on my father’s face grew more intense.
What are the odds of finding a fat wallet almost 45 minutes after it’s gone missing?
Still inside my sister’s little Mini Cooper, looking in the back seat now under bags and jogging gear, I heard, “Are you Mr. Kaiser?”
Two young men — well, young compared to me — pulled up in a black SUV and handed my father his wallet.
They said they were driving toward the beach when they spotted the wallet in the middle of the road.
They grabbed the thing and drove to an old address in Milford that my father apparently still had tucked into his wallet, found out he didn’t live there anymore, and then found the right address — our address.
My father handed them a $20, but they politely refused. The driver even tried to make my father feel better, telling how he’d lost his wallet once on vacation and knew how traumatic it could be.
Lucky for us these guys were on the road.
And so nice to see such a good deed.
We didn’t catch their names, and they didn’t offer them up. Just two anonymous young men out saving the day for an elderly gentleman.