Cash conundrum solved
Mystery man delivered dollars to wrong address
There’s perhaps no better way to let people know about MS Awareness Month than to lose almost $2,000 in fundraising money and then recover it again.
The Telegram’s front page story Friday told how Tammy Pottle, who was hanging laun- dry in her backyard Thursday, was called indoors by her 10-year-old son, Jordan.
A brown envelope with almost $2,000 in it was mysteriously sitting on her dining room table. Her son said a man with a white moustache had left it there.
The envelope had the mark of the Multiple Sclerosis Society on it, so Pottle called them, but didn’t get an answer. She then turned the money over to police.
Zita Kavanagh-Taylor is the chairwoman of the MS chapter for St. John’s-Mount Pearl and surrounding area.
“I couldn’t get the paper in my hands fast enough this morning,” she says.
Recently, the $1,970 was raised at an MS function at the Elks Club. There was a flagraising Thursday at St. John’s City Hall to mark May as MS Awareness Month and a board member of the society, Ron Butler, told Kavanagh-Taylor he would drop the money off at her house so she could send it to the society’s head office in Halifax.
Kavanagh-Taylor and Pottle live on the same street and there’s a difference of just three numbers in their addresses. Also, Pottle has a 10-year-old son and Kavanagh-Taylor has a five-year-old son. Butler simply made a mistake. “His heart was up in his throat when he read the story,” Kavanagh-Taylor says of Butler.
He called her right away Friday morning when he saw the story in The Telegram.
“We’re definitely raising awareness,” Kavanagh-Taylor laughs.
She plans to go thank Pottle for turning the money over. Though they should live right next to each other according to their address numbers, the house numbers on their street are so skewed that they live on separate parts of the road and don’t know each other.
“It shows that people are honest,” Kavanagh-Taylor says. ”It’s a good news story with a happy ending.”
Pottle, whose good friend has MS, says she’s happy the money is back where it belongs and that she knows the truth behind the bizarre incident.
“I’m just glad that somebody read it this morning and it turned out the way it did.”