Warsaw Resident Thankful For Good Samaritan
WARSAW — He could have kept it – the cash, the cards, the Social Security number – but when Rex Heirman, Warsaw, found Beth Puckett’s wallet lying on the ground, he instead returned everything.
Monday, Feb. 22, was off to a crazy start for Puckett, Warsaw, as she finished her errands and loaded her daughter into the car. To free up one hand, Puckett placed her large clutch-style wallet on top of the roof, buckled her daughter in and drove off.
“I’d just forgotten that I’d set it up there,” she said. “I took off and I got down the road and realized I didn’t have it, so I backtracked and just drove and drove.”
Puckett contacted the Warsaw Police Department and they helped her in her search. She parked her vehicle and, along with her daughter, walked up and down the street where she had been driving.
No wallet.
“We got down the road and there was this guy who had sat down on his front porch to take a smoke break,” she said.
She asked the stranger, Hierman, if he had seen her wallet and described it to him. He motioned for her to come over, then went into the house, returned with a key and unlocked the back of his scooter.
“Right there was my wallet,” she said. “He didn’t take anything. The money, my cards, my Social Security card, everything was safe.”
Puckett and Hierman struck up a conversation. He told her there had been a moment of temptation with the cash, but he had pushed it aside.
“I looked at it. An ID and everything was in there, like 10 credit cards, money, it was just full of everything,” Hiermann said. “I just looked at everything and I went through and looked at the ID and everything. I said to myself, I’ve got to give this back to her. I said, ‘well, if I lost it, what would I want somebody to do?’”
Hierman placed it in his scooter to take to the police department, then went onto his porch for a break. That was when Puckett and her daughter came by.
“She came up and asked me, ‘did you find a wallet?'” Hierman motioned her over. “She came up. I ran in and got the keys to the scooter and I gave it to her. She was tickled to death.”
Puckett returned home and contacted her husband to let him know the wallet had been located. They decided they wanted to do something for Hierman, so they returned together to his home.
“A half-hour or so later she came back with her husband and they thanked me and everything and they gave me $50 and I told them thanks,” Hierman said.
“We were just so happy that he turned everything in and we didn’t have to go through the hassle of changing over our cards and Social Security cards,” Puckett said.
Afterwards, Hierman called some close, trusted friends from church, accountability partners whom he could talk with and relate the incident to.
“I said, for a couple seconds, your mind thinks, ‘rotten,’ but I was brought up right,” he said. “I just wanted to share it. I called before she came back with her husband I said, ‘I feel good inside. You aren’t going to believe what happened.’ I’m a believer in God and you just know you’ve got to do the right thing.”