The Golden Rule is Alive and Well

By

Mike Scinto

Appearing in Kettering-Oakwood Times-Times Community Newspapers

     All too often good deeds go unnoticed and unappreciated. I intend to make sure that doesn’t happen for a couple who exemplify how we all should live. They’re from Tipp City and their names are Tony and Sue Sutton.

     They will quickly tell you they are Christians, retired and appear to be enjoying life. What did they do that set them apart from other folks and drove me to write about them in this column? They found my wallet and returned it to me with every dollar bill, credit card and piece of paper intact (at least the same shape in which they found them).

     One morning this past week, following a night of only a couple of hours of sleep, I was dozing off in the late morning. The door bell rang, or at least I awoke thinking I heard the door bell. I looked out and a gentleman was standing in the doorway. He asked if I was Mike Scinto. There was no gun drawn, he wasn’t wearing an “Obama or Bust” t-shirt nor was he accompanied by Dog The Bounty Hunter so I responded in the affirmative.

     He then reached his hand toward me and asked if I wanted my wallet. Still wiping sleep from my eyes I wondered when I gave this man, who I had never seen before, my wallet. I took the billfold that looked like it had been run over by a car with some of the cards broken and cracked. It looked that way because it had been run over; apparently all night long, with the contents strewn over a major thoroughfare next to Tony’s (the man at the door) home.

     It was a good test of this (rather costly) wallet that I had to beg my wife to allow me to buy just months earlier. After it was cleaned up it looked as good as new. Every card (but one) was in there, as was a sizable amount of cash. That was unusual for me because I am on the plastic standard now and rarely carry cash.

     It seems Sue, Tony’s better half, was gardening in the early morning and saw the wallet and contents in the road. She and Tony proceeded to search for as much of what was originally in the wallet as they could find. They did a great job!

     After gathering it all together Tony saw our address on the driver’s license and brought it back. I followed him home and Tony, Sue and I tried to reconstruct my travels the night before and I realized I had, in fact, driven down that road a couple of times. I have a bad habit of laying things on the bed cover of my pickup truck and forgetting they are there. I assume that’s what happened the previous night.

     There were a couple of ironies in the event. First, just prior to Tony coming to our front door I had been in a discussion with Dayton residents on Facebook about how different things are in the suburbs. You have to lock and guard your possessions in the city and in our community things are just the opposite. This proved my point. I hate to say it, and I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t wager much that this would happen on a street in the Gem City.

     The second irony was that, as I mentioned, there was one card that the Suttons didn’t find. Sue had told me this event was God-driven and as I approached their home to thank them again, a light colored object caught my eye on the road. It was the missing card. So I had everything back, in working order and my wife wouldn’t have to kill me for being so careless.

     Just as we are bombarded by headlines of shootings, armed robberies and muggings, two wonderful people reminded me that if guided by Faith and conscience, we really can treat others as we would hope to be treated. So Tony and Sue, thanks for being the kind of people who really do answer the question WWJD; What Would Jesus Do?