Posted on 02/09/2007 2:53:54 AM PST by familyop
Lynnwood cabbie Vinod Mago could have pocketed the $5,950 he found in his taxi and made a beeline for the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
After all, the 55-year-old drives a Seattle-Tacoma International Taxi Association cab and ferries passengers to and from the airport.
And fibs are easy to tell.
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Meryl Schenker / P-I | |
| Said cab driver Vinod Mago: "If money doesn't belong to me, I don't keep it. I know God is watching everybody, every second." | ||
But on Feb. 1, he returned a lost black wallet -- stuffed with $50 and $100 bills -- that a passenger had left in the back of cab No. 33.
"If money doesn't belong to me, I don't keep it," Mago said. "I know God is watching everybody, every second."
Mago had just started his morning shift that Thursday when friend Stanley Lal, an airport taxi coordinator, called to say that a distraught man named Peter was looking for his wallet.
Mago pulled his white-and-green cab over in Bellevue and spotted the wallet in the backseat near the right-side passenger door.
He made a beeline for the airport, where Peter, hearing that the wallet was found, had hugged Lal four or five times in joy. "He said, 'That's my life savings!' " Lal recalled.
The man's honesty mirrors a New York City taxi driver who recently returned a black bag containing 31 diamond rings to a passenger. Earlier, she had given Osman Chowdhury a 30-cent tip on an $11 ride.
The woman, who said she was a jeweler, left the valuables in the cab's trunk and had offered a $100 reward. Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh, took it to cover fares he lost while he was tracking the woman down.
"I'm not going to take someone else's money or property to make me rich. I don't want it that way," the New York cabbie said.
Peter, the Seattle passenger, apparently was going to buy a car with his cash.
When Mago returned the wallet, he told Peter to count the bills.
"He said, 'I don't need to count the money. It's such a huge amount. I believe you,' " Mago said.
Mago, who moved to the United States from India in 1984, was glad another passenger had not taken the wallet.
"It would have been embarrassing," he said. "He would have thought I took it."
In a letter of praise to the cab association, Peter wrote: "I wish there were more people in the world like this man."
Months ago, Mago found $640 in his taxi. He returned that money, too.
"My mother always said if you're an honest person, you will always have money in your pocket," he said.
The passenger thanked Mago by giving him $100.
Mago celebrated by taking his family to dinner at the Olive Garden in Lynnwood.
Lal received $20 from the grateful passenger. "Maybe I spent it on gas for my Nissan Pathfinder," he said.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
30 cents? I would have told her to keep it since she must need it more than me.
What a stingy old b.
This one gave him $20! That's nothing too. I guess he wasn't very grateful to get his money back.
Wallet stuffed with $5,950 in 50's and 100's? How big was that wallet, anyway?
It reminded me of that wallet episode on Sienfeld.
Mago was given $100.
Years ago I delivered pizzas. I was at a house that proved the pizza driver saying "The longer the driveway, the shorter the tip." (That saying is often accurate, but not an absolute) It was cold and blowing snow and this guy was waiting for his $0.13 change. My fingers were getting stiff with the cold, so I gave him a quarter and told him to keep it.
The sad thing is that this unconscious idiot is probably still bragging about the time the pizza driver tipped him.
Good on the cabbie.
That does seems to make all the difference...
One would think that this sort of thing would bring about some sort of informal system of prioritizing deliveries on future orders.
It just goes to reaffirm my longtime guideline, "never screw with the people who bring you food"...
Right, it was the other guy given $20, thanks.
Not to many on this board. The amount of the reward given is what counts.
There was. I was given that run because I was the nube. Nubes get lost, don't know the streets and addresses as well and haven't learned all the shortcuts.
It just goes to reaffirm my longtime guideline, "never screw with the people who bring you food"...
Never mess with cooks, corpsmen or dispersing.
I remember many years ago, when I routinely shared car rides from the ship to home (in the Cleveland Area) with the ships' Yoeman and the Disbursing Clerk.
I think I got at least 2 weeks extra leave that year... ;)
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