A key save

Yesterday afternoon, as I was walking home from the bus stop after work, I spied something unusual in the middle of the street. It was a neck lanyard, with a bunch of keys, including a couple of expensive remote entry keys for a Dodge van. I wasn't sure what I would do with them, but I knew I couldn't leave them in the middle of the street so I grabbed them and continued on my way home. As I walked, I examined my find. In addition to the keys, there were a number of those key ring sized club membership cards for various chain stores' savings clubs, and several pictures of girls about my daughters' ages. But no name or phone numbers, which I guess made sense since there were also house and storage unit keys in the set.

When I got home, I showed my wife what I had found, and she, being the clever detective that she is, started calling the various stores and reading the card numbers to them. Unfortunately, the first few we called couldn't (or if they could, wouldn't tell us) find any information that might identify the owner of the keys. We began to wonder if all the cards were old and expired (there was one for a discount department store that went out of business almost ten years ago!). But, just before we gave up, we hit the jackpot. The manager at the Giant Food store (http://www.giantfood.com) told us to call their customer service center, and gave us the phone number. The operator at the customer service center took our names and phone number, and told us she would contact the owner of the card and him/her call us. Not five minutes later, the owner of the keys was on the phone with us, getting directions to come pick up his keys! Kudos to Giant Food for the quick response to an issue that really had nothing to do with them!

When he arrived, we learned that the back window of his van had been smashed by vandals, and the glass repair company had been to his house that afternoon to install the new window. They had driven away with his keys on the back bumper of their truck. He had planned to have them pay for the replacement keys, so he wasn't terribly worried about the loss, but we did save him a fair bit of hassle. As we were talking, the glass repair company truck drove slowly down the street, clearly looking for the lost keys! We flagged them down, and the owner of the keys had a brief chat with them, before everyone went on their way.