If nothing else, Adam Douley is definitely tenacious. While the options that present themselves when one finds a lost wallet are many, there probably aren’t too many folks who would have gone to the lengths Douley did to return a
If nothing else, Adam Douley is definitely tenacious.
While the options that present themselves when one finds a lost wallet are many, there probably aren’t too many folks who would have gone to the lengths Douley did to return a visitor’s lost wallet to her.
Douley, night manager at the Blossoming Lotus restaurant in Kapa‘a, found the wallet outside the restaurant, near a fountain, and immediately set out to try to find the owner.
That mission saw him calling representatives of the wallet-owner’s insurance company on the Mainland, who gave him the home telephone number of the wallet-owner.
That was the only item in the wallet that would allow Douley to try to track down the owner, said Esther Muskopf of Carlisle Barracks, Penn., the wallet-owner’s stepmother.
Douley called, and got through to the wallet-owner’s mother, who relayed the information to members of the Muskopf party, who today end a two-week stay at the Pono Kai in Kapa‘a.
Robin Muskopf, 18, of Dongola, Ill., was reunited with her wallet less than 24 hours after she’d lost it.
Still inside the wallet was the $126 she had saved up for spending money for her Kaua‘i trip. Douley was rewarded with a big hug and some remuneration, Esther Muskopf said.
“We’re just so excited about the aloha spirit here,” Esther Muskopf said.
While retracing their steps and trying to find the wallet, the Muskopf family members were told by all the Kapa‘a shopkeepers and employees that they’d keep eyes open for the wallet, and would send out the aloha spirit for its safe return, Esther Muskopf said.
Especially helpful were the employees of the ABC Discount Stores location in the heart of Kapa‘a town, the last place Robin Muskopf bought something before losing her wallet, Esther Muskopf said.
Esther Muskopf said Kaua‘i Police Department officer Bryson M. Ponce, the responding officer in the lostproperty case, said the longer a wallet goes missing, the lower the likelihood of its return.
Tears of agony that several people witnessed coming from Robin Muskopf’s eyes while she was sitting on a bench in the middle of Kapa‘a the day before, turned into tears of joy when she was reunited with her wallet and met the honest man who went to great lengths to return it to her intact, Esther Muskopf said.
In fact, a Pono Kai concierge, when told of the story, said her daughter saw Robin Muskopf crying in Kapa‘a the day before, and begged her mother to stop to see what was the matter was, Esther Muskopf said.
- Paul C. Curtis, associate editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@pulitzer.net.
