Most people whether they want to admit it or not have experience working in a retail store of some kind. I personally have over eight years of experience working in these various torture chambers of customer satisfaction. This is the story of the day I came into direct contact with more money than I would make in an entire year in one man's wallet.
I worked for Sam's Club around the turn of the millennium. Sam's is one of those pay to shop, membership required, big box stores where you can only buy 100 packs of paper towels and #10 cans of beans. For those of you not aquatinted with the #10 can, its the one that you imagine a cook on a navy vessel emptying into a huge vat of indescribable mush. I was almost twenty years old and going to college severely part-time and trying to figure out what I should do with my life so a job where I didn't have to try all that hard worked perfectly for me.
This day was the same as all the other I had worked previously until I walked outside for my lunch break. I didn't usually take my lunch outside of the store but it was a particularly beautiful day. Autumn in Northern Florida is a beautiful time. The rest of the year you'll die of heat stroke between your car and the stores front door. The store should have employed EMT's around the clock to keep the older customers from dying on their way inside.
While I was walking over to my car I noticed a wallet someone had left inside a cart. This wasn't a rarity at all people left wallets, purses and checkbooks all the time. So I picked up the wallet with the intention of putting it in the lost and found on my way back in from lunch. From this point forward I had the longest lunch break of my retail career.
I tossed the wallet carelessly onto my passenger seat and began eating my sandwich. After a few minutes of listening to "Car Talk" I noticed the wallet lying open on my passenger seat and I could see a very large collection of green. I immediately picked up the wallet and looked inside. There was almost $10,000 cash in this wallet. My thoughts went instantly to my last W-2 which had read "gross income: $8,324." This guy was carrying around more money that I made in a year. All one hundred dollar bills and all crisp and new. To say I was tempted to keep the money would be a gross understatement. I knew that no one saw me pick up this wallet and I new that no one would ever know that I had taken this money. I sat in the car staring at the money constantly thinking that I should keep it. The minutes dragged on and I assured myself that I would use the money for school or some other expense that was for the greater good. Like one day I'll cure cancer and taking that money will be forgiven.
I never looked at the ID. When it was time for me to return to work I simply went into our mangers office and turned in the wallet. Later, I heard that the man was a cardiologist down in our little beach side community on vacation and he had called the store several times to make sure that his money was safe and he would be back directly to pick it up. I never met the man. Not that I wanted a reward, but I think I would want to shake the hand of the person who turned in my $10,000 dollars instead of using it to fund his trip to medical school where he would have cured cancer. Later still, I had to suffer the embarrassment of being featured in the quarterly news magazine that the company put out so now not only did all the people who worked in my store know what a sap I was but everyone company wide knew.
To this day I don't know if I made the right decision. But, I'm not a thief. In a world of gray morals I guess this was my stand. Who knows what will happen next time I find $10,000 laying on the street.
Until a year ago I had lived by the ocean for my entire life. When I say near the ocean I mean within two miles of the ocean. I miss it.
This is our cat, Kera. I personally don't like the name but she was named when we got her and she responds to her name. I like having a cat. They are good for killing bugs and they typically don't need a lot of attention but they appreciate it when you give them attention. Dogs are a different story. I don't understand dogs behavior. I've always had cats so I know what they are going to do.
Deep South Skatepark opened in October of 1999 in Pensacola, FL and I spent pretty much everyday there until it closed in December of 2001. I actually got a job at the park as an accident. The owner, Paul, told me that the park was going to start being closed on Mondays because there weren't enough people coming to justify having someone working an entire shift. So I told Paul that if he was going to close the park that he had to give me a key. I started working there the next week. Deep South was about an hour drive from my house and getting out there everyday was a chore. When I started working out there I was a senior in high school and I had to start driving to Pensacola as soon as I got out of school. There were plenty of days that I was completely exhausted driving down Hwy 98. Honestly, after driving so much for so long when the park finally closed I missed that time when I could just be alone with my thoughts. I know that it doesn't look like much from the picture but Deep South was a great park with a dedicated bunch of locals that kept things in line. I am really grateful to Paul and Rhonda for opening the park. I was lucky to be a part of it and lucky to be a part of the best group of employee's Paul N. Brian J. Cale L. and myself.
This photo was taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, FL. Anyone from northern Florida knows BC and this pool was at his apartment complex. I don't know how he convinced the building manager to let us skate here but he did. I was at work and Brian called me and asked me if I wanted to go skate a pool. Yes, is the only possible answer to that question. I was ready right then. I could have walked out of work right then but Brian said the session wasn't on until BC got home. The rest on my day at work was spend wondering if I would be able to carve the light or if this was going to be a bank to wall pool or if it was going to be skateable at all. I drove straight from work to Cale's house to pick him up and then straight to BC's. I was amazed that the guys were already skating and it was totally cool with everyone in the complex. The only pools I had skated prior to this one were the type where you took one run a piece and ran like hell because the neighbor had already called the cops. None of us in that group were heavy pool shredders but everybody got over the light and I caught some truck on the top of the tile. This pool was available to skate from three p.m. to sunset for about two weeks and I was there everyday and excited as hell. All good things come to an end, especially skate spots in NW Florida. In hindsight I wish I would have told more people about the pool and had bigger sessions. I was afraid that the more people we had out there the sooner the people who lived in the building would shut it down. Skating a pool is loud and everybody was dealing with the stress of post-hurricane life. Some people were getting evicted due to damage to the building and most did not have electricity. So the fact that they let us have this as long as they did is even more amazing. A nuisance that would not have been put up with in normal life is not even paid attention when dealing with such a large problem.
I knew this guy and his family when they lived in Pensacola, FL. I think Sierra was about 12 or 13 years old so it makes sense that he didn't drink or anything thing. But, knowing him then made me think it was totally possible that he would become a professional skateboarder. I've never met someone that was more dedicated to spending 23.5 hrs a day on a skateboard. One night my friend Paul and I were at a party and from the balcony we could see Sierra skating some terrible bench spot by himself in the middle of the night. I am glad that he as loosened up a little bit and embraced the fun side of life. There has never been a more serious 13 year old. Sierra is a good dude that deserves everything good that he gets in life.
