Lost and Found

Here is a puzzling situation.  Yesterday, around 5:30 p.m., I stopped by the post office to weigh and mail a small packet.  By that time, of course, everybody is long gone and not returning until noonish on Saturday.  When I went to weigh my packet on the scale in the front lobby, there was a folder sitting on the scale.  I just took it off, laid it next to the scale, weighed my packet and, satisfied that I had put enough postage on it, put it into the slot on the wall across from the scale.  And started to leave.

But, as I walked toward the door, I saw that folder and realized that somebody had left it there, doubtless accidentally.  The kind of thing I can do every day of the week, every time I walk out of the house.  So I picked it up and opened it to see if there was something waylaid of value that needed to be returned to its owner.  Inside were a thicket of papers of some sort of business listing: objects that had been mailed by a company that had a post office box in Point Roberts.  And also a small cloth, zippered bag.  It felt awkward opening the bag, but I did it anyway and found, inside, a Canadian passport and a few more papers, but none of them with a Point Roberts street address or phone number.

What to do?  You live on the border and the mere thought of losing/mislaying your passport is a major, major issue.  On the other hand, there's no way I can find this person, even though I can see what he looks like from his passport photo, on a Friday night.  And, if he's on the Point, then he's not likely to be leaving without his passport.

And why not just leave it there, where I found it?  Who's going to come by and steal his passport?  Nobody?  Somebody?  Do passports have some intrinsic value for anyone except their true owner?  The movies tell me that there's a busy black market in passports, but I'm not in a movie.  I'm in the Point Roberts post office on Friday night, and by now it's about 5:45 p.m. 

I stand there, fretting, trying to think this through in some way to find a satisfying resolution.  I could drive it up to the border crossing and leave it with the Canadian agents, maybe?  But will its owner think to go to the border to ask for it after he comes back to the post office and finds it not there?  Probably not.  He'll just be in a panic and not thinking any more clearly than I am.  So, I decide that I am going to have to babysit the passport, and about ten-fifteen minutes later, a car drives up with a panicky driver, a driver whose face I recognize instantly from the passport. 

I go out the door as he comes in, telling him as we pass that his stuff is safely there on the scale.  And the relief on his face was well worth my brief passport baby-sitting stint.  I'm glad he hadn't gone to have dinner with a friend on the Point, though.  Just now, as I was writing this, I thought of an option: I could have left him a note on the scale with my address/phone number and he could have picked it up.  Maybe I'd have thought of that if I'd still been there at 6:15 p.m.