A Christmas found after a wallet is lost

“Who steals my purse steals trash,” Shakespeare once wrote, making the point that one’s good name and reputation are far more valuable than the contents of a billfold.

Obviously Shakespeare never had to buy Christmas presents with his good name; reputation is not a recognized medium of exchange. No one stole Lauren Marcoux’s purse, but she was horrified nonetheless Wednesday morning to discover, which amounts almost to the same thing, that she’d lost her wallet.

How horrified? You might ask Mark Wu. He is the one who found Lauren Marcoux’s wallet.

“It just so happened I was crossing James Street North (near Rebecca) that morning,” Mark tells me (he works in the area), “and for whatever reason I looked down. “Oh, a wallet!” He brought it to his office — Mark is co-owner of 2Gen.Net (21 King St. West) — to rummage through for contact information so he could return it to the owner.

He looked in one of the flaps. Nothing with an address or phone number. He looked in the other flap. He did a double take.

“There was so much cash, stacks of bills,” says Mark. “Hundreds of dollars, for sure. I didn’t even count it.”

Now it was not Lauren Marcoux’s good fortune to lose her wallet — that was just plain out stinking bad luck, especially this time of year. But if, heaven forbid, you have to lose your wallet at Christmas, you want Mark Wu to find it. Lauren hit the jackpot there. I say that because the finding of a wallet does not contain in and of itself, as a causal necessity, the rightful return to said wallet’s owner. There can be chasms of complication gaping between the one and the other, though in real space they’re but a few blocks apart. “There were a few business cards in the wallet (not the owner’s business cards) but no driver’s licence.” Nothing with phone number, address or email address. But there was an OHIP card. Not that helpful but it had her picture.

“The face was a bit familiar. I tried to think when, where. Maybe Jackson Square.”

So what did Mark do, like he wasn’t busy enough the Wednesday before Christmas? He left the office and went scouring through the mall for that face. No luck.

He returned to the office. He made calls, ransacked his memory, asked others if they could place the face. He was about to go off to a midday meeting after which he planned to turn the wallet in to the police station when he noticed a card for Heaven’s Kitchen.

Now why did that name sound familiar? Heaven’s Kitchen? A month ago, there would’ve been no resonance because it didn’t exist. It’s a brand new restaurant, 54 James North. Mark remembered passing by a new place with a name that sounded like that.

So before his meeting he paid a visit. And wouldn’t you know it. There was Lauren Marcoux, working at the café.

“I think I have your wallet,” Mark told her. Lauren, who had just started her job there, was ecstatic. And she confirmed for him his feeling that he’d seen her in the mall. She worked there before getting on at Heaven’s Kitchen.

At Heaven’s Kitchen, they all asked him to take some small reward but he graciously declined. As he says, “anyone would have done it.” I’m not sure. In any case, Mark did. The finding of the wallet’s owner was its own reward.

Mark, a Sherwood grad (born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, he came to Hamilton at age 13), says part of his dogged determination comes from his “competitiveness.” He wasn’t going to let this thing beat him. Plus he’s a volunteer and sports coach and believes in giving back.

I wasn’t able to speak to Lauren but her friend Karen started me on this with an email: “Christmas brings the best out in people,” she wrote. “My friend Lauren just stopped by the bank before her morning shift and dropped her wallet full of cash. This guy deserves some recognition for his good deed. There should be more people like him in the world.”

Ain’t that the truth. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.