Kindness of Strangers

By Karen McNew
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: April 4, 2008

I lost my ATM card this week and it nearly sent me into a tailspin… I had a packed day of things to get done before I came into work and one of those things was making a deposit at the ATM near our home… it was my first stop.. I don’t usually do ATM deposits so I was a little thrown off anyway.. I put my card into the machine..typed my pin…selected deposit to checking account and all of the sudden the machine starts flashing and beeping at me.. I quickly grabbed one of the white deposit envelopes… put the checks inside and wrote the amount and my name on the outside then slid it into the machine… as it was going through I thought OHHH NOOOO I forgot to endorse two of the checks!!! Then, I realized since they were made out to me and Matt and he had signed them that it would probably be okay…distraction number one - I grabbed my cell and called Matt to be sure… then I see the little white receipt pop out.. I grabbed the receipt and then was on my way… I went to the gym… I stopped by a local shipping store… then the drug store… I went to pay for my items at the drug store and realized OOOOHHHHH NOOOOO my card was no where to be found… I paid with a credit card thinking my check card must have fallen into the floor board of my car or something…

I get out to the car….NO CARD…. I look through every inch of my purse ( I have been known to mistakenly drop it into a side pocket… only to freak out later and then find it and feel silly)  NO CARD… then I started to panic a little bit… I could have sworn that I had grabbed the card - I had the receipt why didn’t I have the card??  So I detour from my to do list and trace my steps back to the ATM machine… no card… not in the parking lot… not in the machine—I figured it had gotten sucked into the machine… that is what someone told me happens when you forget your card… but since there is not a bank attached to this machine it must not work that way…

Since I had the receipt I had the 1-800 number for my bank… I immediately called and talked to a very nice lady named Gayle… she was kind and thorough with her questions… I explained what happened and she didn’t skip a beat with her responses… she clearly must deal with these calls pretty often… at the end of the conversation she said - we will send you another card with the same pin… if you would like to receive it tomorrow you may do so through a shipping company for a 16 dollar fee…. I decided I would be able to go without the card for the 5 days it will take to get a new one… I had already added a few gray hairs for this mistake I didn’t want to give up the 16 dollars for it too…

I got home and talked to my husband about it… he was very kind and said all the right things… “I’ve done it before…“  “It will be alright…“  “You can use the credit card for things if you need it and here is some cash just in case too…“ Rarely do I carry cash but in this instance I don’t have much choice…

I get into work and there is an e-mail with the subject heading “I have your ATM card”  I didn’t know whether to be excited or worried… you never know what may land in your in box… it turned out to be a very nice e-mail from a business person in the area who had come upon my card at the ATM and said she still had it if I wanted to stop by to get it… the words instantly warmed my heart to know that there are honest and thoughtful people out there among the scammers and crooks who would have likely already bought gas, groceries and who knows what else in the two hours it took me to realize my card was gone…

I politely replied with a thank you.. and told her I had already called the bank and that they were sending me a new one… I also said a little prayer of thanks for the nice people in this world…