On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:25:07 GMT, "Phillip Devoll" <lame@lame.org> wrote:
:
: "SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
: news:47bde8d0$0$36383$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
: > Bill Kearney wrote:
: >>> Once, I found a phone on a walking path, and it worked ok... sold it on
: >>> eBay, then it was locked out as - lost/stolen - I refunded the buyer,
: >>> and learned.....
: >>
: >> Gee, you'll take the time to setup an ebay auction, but not to just drop
: >> it off to a local phone store? How civic minded of you... not.
: >>
: >> I've dropped off several phones I've found over the years. One wasn't
: >> from that provider, but they looked whose it was, so I walked over to
: >> that store instead. No reward, no thanks, just a clear conscience.
: >
: > I found a cell phone in the street once, and it was a real pain to get it
: > back to the owner. First, he had nothing identifying who owned it, i.e. no
: > "Home" entry in the phone book. Second, it was a T-Mobile phone, so when I
: > took it home I couldn't make any calls, and had to go to a place with
: > T-Mobile coverage. I called a random entry in the contact list and
: > explained what had happened, and the person contacted the owner. I forgot
: > to tell them to have the owner call me on my own phone, not the found
: > phone, so I couldn't receive a call from the owner at home, but luckily he
: > called me while I was out somewhere else.
: >
: > It would have never occurred to me to try to sell it on eBay. If I
: > couldn't find the owner then I would have returned it to one of the
: > carrier's stores so they could contact the owner some other way.
:
: My brother lost his phone and before he even realize it our sister called him
: and said some called him from his personal cell and he was able to call the
: person and the meet the next day and he got it back....

A couple of years ago I was at my daughter's house in Philadelphia, when a
call came in from her cell phone to mine. "Why is she calling me from
downstairs?" thought I. But the caller was a stranger, who had found my
daughter's handbag in a park across the street from an ice cream stand where
we had taken her kids the night before. (It had fallen off of her son's
stroller in the dark, and she hadn't noticed that it was missing.) The finder
turned out to be an employee of the ice cream stand, whose owner was a friend
of my daughter and her husband. The finder didn't know my daughter or about
the connection to his employer. But altogether unwittingly, he had given his
employer an unsolicited demonstration of his honesty.

Additional odd factoid: I had taken some flash pictures of my daughter's kids
in the park. When I was editing them a couple of days later, I discovered that
one of them showed the handbag lying on the ground.

Bob