It was when Dennis “Moe” Petty stepped back in to Crabby Joes restaurant in Daytona Beach, Fla., that his wife Kathy, looked down and spotted a wallet laying under their bench.
They had been enjoying the sounds of the surf on the bench during their winter get-away to sunny Florida. Kathy reached down to retrieve it and began to look inside as she waited for her husband to return.
At the same moment and some 25 miles away, Joanne Zimmermann had just realized her wallet was missing. She was frantically retracing her steps and searching all of the logical places her wallet might be.
A sick feeling was beginning to take hold as she realized it might be hopelessly lost. Now the work begins, she thought, to cancel and replace the financial and personal contents the wallet held. She said, “I was worried about all of the things I would have to do to protect myself from whoever might find my wallet.”
What Joanna did not know is that Moe and Kathy Petty are from Carmel. Had she known that, she could have rested easy.
There would have been no reason to worry about identity theft; European vacations on her credit cards or even getting the $100 cash back.
“We found a wallet and made a new friend,” Moe said. “I am glad we were able to find the owner and return it to her instead of what you normally hear about. Even though we were only in Daytona for the day, there was no question we would make an effort find the owner of the wallet.”
Joanne Zimmerman is a 45-year resident of Florida, and she said she was prepared for the worst as Daytona this time of year is filling up with race car fans and lots of transient people.
“They were so nice, and I was so happy to get my wallet back, I wanted to say thank you since they would not accept a reward,” she said.
So Joanne reached out to Current in Carmel to report the good deed.
She now has a very good reason to think highly of people from Carmel. And she went to a lot of trouble to report the unusually honest and much-appreciated act the Petty’s performed.
But the best part of this story is knowing this really isn’t news at all.
