Uncommon Woman

What would you do if you found a credit card - unsigned - lying in the street? Leave it there, afraid it was planted to catch thieves? Pick it up before a real thief does?

I picked it up and stuck it in my purse before a real thief did. I was on a mission: buy yarn then groceries and get home in less than 90 minutes when the sitter had to leave. I sat in the van after the yarn purchase, searching Facebook and the Internet with the owner's name in hopes that I could somehow connect the card owner to a business downtown and return it. No luck. (I kinda doubt it belonged to the artist lady in Canada whose name was sort of like hers.)

So I drove to the grocery store feeling like a klepto with a stranger's credit card. I had a plan by the time I made it to my parking spot: call the 1-800 # on the back.

I listened to the recording but there was no option for "found a credit card lying in the street," so I chose "if you are calling to report a lost or stolen card" because....I guess it WAS lost by someone and I guess I DID steal it, if you want to call it that.

When I finally, finally got a human on the line, the first one didn't know what to do with me. "You want to do what?"

"I found a card and I want to get it back to its owner,"

"So you're calling to report a lost card?"

"Yes, but I FOUND it. I'm not using it. It's not mine."

Twenty or 30 seconds of this type of exchange until she says, "I'm going to send you to a specialist." Probably because she thinks I am a klepto thief or worse.

Dave picks up the line and says, "you want to do what?" Like he can't believe it either.

"If I knew who she was I'd just drive it to her. It's a small town." I say. I don't want specialist Dave thinking I'm a weird klepto thief, too.

He finally picks up what I'm throwing down, and (bring the fraud protection specialist he likely is) agreed to put a stop on the account and contact the card's owner (THANK YOU) and kindly asked me to put it in the mail to send to headquarters.

Then he said, "thank you for being such a Good Samaritan about this." Which was kind of nice, though awkward, bur made me feel like I'd done a good deed, proving to Dave the (likely) frauds specialist and hopefully the card owner that there are still honest people in this world.

Im reading "The Uncommon Woman," and so far I'm feeling thoroughly common, unlike the Godly woman author and all she espouses, but this incident makes me wonder: is honesty so uncommon that the credit card companies don't know what to do with it?

Perhaps I am an uncommon woman after all...