I was with a work colleague when I found a cell phone in the back of a cab.
“Should I give it to the driver?” she asked.
“No,” I sighed. “I’ll take it. I’ll do my good deed for the month.” I figured I could use some good karma.
I went back to my office and started looking through the phone - contacts, incoming calls, recently dialed numbers. Many were Italian names, with numbers that clearly dialed outside the U.S. Finally, I settled on the recently dialed number for Josie Cell, which also appreard in the contacts next to Josie Home and Josie Country.
“Hello?” a voice answered after four rings. I explained that I had found the phone in a taxi, and was trying to find its owners.
“Well that’s very nice of you,” she said. “Do you know who’s it is?”
“Um, no...” I replied. “Unless maybe it came up on your phone?”
“Oh! Well, the number did! It’s...” she proceeded to tell me the number. Useless.
“Well, I’m still not sure who’s it is,” I replied.
“Well, maybe if you read me some names in it,” she suggested.
“Sure,” I replied, trying to figure out how to set it on speaker phone and view the Contact List simultaneously. Who owns a Motorola Razr anymore?
Eventually, I figured it out and began reading her some contacts, no doubt butchering the names, which were mostly European. After only 5 or 6, she interrupted.
“Oh! It’s my mother’s phone! Or my father’s. Those are their people.”
I thought, “Their name didn’t come up on your caller ID?” but said nothing.
“Oh they’re probably in hysterics over it being missing. You’d never know it, but they are 85 and 92! They’re crazy artists who live in tribeca.”
“... Oh.”
“Thank you so much!” she went on. She gave me their exact address, which I wrote down though I had no intention of visiting. I was going for good karma, not sainthood. Then she gave me their home phone number, and their names. “Just call them at home,” she said, “and tell them you have the phone. They’ll send a messenger or something. Thank you so much!”
I disconnected, curious about these “crazy artists” who lived in what was probably a very nice loft in TriBeCa, judging from the address. Maybe I should deliver the phone in person.
“Hello?” a male voice answered when I dialed the home number. I once again explained I’d found a phone in the back of a taxi, this time adding that I’d gotten their home number from their daughter, and I thought the phone was theirs.
“Oh, thank you so much!” exclaimed the father. “That’s a very nice thing you’re doing. Where are you?”
I told him I was in the Times Square area, and he said to someone else in the room with him, “Can you go to Times Square?” After a beat, he said to me, “Talk to Christie, she’ll arrange to pick it up. And thank you!”
A second later, a female voice got on the line. Younger, definitely not the mother - a personal assistant? A Nurse?
“Thank you so much!” she said. “Tell me where you are, I’m happy to come up to you.”
I gave her the address, and she agreed to meet me within an hour. Then just as she was about to hang up, someone, presumably the mother, said something to her. She listened, then repeated it to me.
“Do you like olive oil?” she asked.
“Um... well, yes,” I replied, which was true. “I like it very much.”
“Well,” she said,”Mr. and Mrs. LostPhone make their own olive oil. They live half the year in Italy. They want to know if you’d like a bottle?”
SCORE!
“That’s so nice of them,” I replied. “I would love a bottle.”
“Great, see you soon!” she said, and hung up.
“HOMEMADE OLIVE OIL ON THE WAY!” I shouted to my colleagues as I hung up the phone.
“What??”
I told them the story.
“Crazy artists?”
“Half the year in Italy??”
“Homemade olive oil!?”
“You got it,” I laughed.
45 minutes later, we were dipping bread into some of the most amazing olive oil I’ve ever tasted.
“This is incredible!” cried a co-worker, licking her fingers. “It’s like crack in a bottle!”
“Better,” I said. “It’s Karma in a bottle.”
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