good deed for the day!

It's rare that I feel unsafe here in Seattle, there've been a couple times where we've had transients enter the building, one time two of them were having a pretty good fight (over a blanket, makes ya think sometimes) and once in a while in the early mornings when I come in and they're still sleeping outside the door but for the most part I do my thing and there's NO problem.

Today, I've had two uncomfortable moments.

1. On my way up to the social security office I disrupted two people in the elevator smoking crack. No I'm not kidding. Thank goodness there was a man next to me waiting for the elevator too. We just turned around and walked away. When we got about 10 feet from the elevator we both just looked at each other in a very stunned way and headed to the other elevator. This was his first time downtown in YEARS he said, I bet he won't be back down either! ;)

2. Then about an hour ago a transient walked into our office while I was covering the front desk. He had a bag with him and said he had found it outside in the parking area and asked if I could call the number of the owner since his daytimer and checkbook were still in the bag. I normally would have asked the guy to leave but there was something to this.

I took the bag and opened it up and there were bills, two check books, a purse and a daytimer inside. I took out the daytimer and called the number...

The owner answered, I identified myself and he got so excited, he asked me to check and see if his bills were still in the front pocket, they were and he then asked to speak with the gentleman that found the bag. He asked him to stay put and he'd bring a reward and be down to get the bag in about 30 minutes.

Well, a transient doesn't sit in our office without a LOT of questions being asked. I started getting emails immediately asking if I needed him to be cleared out, I had our IT guy come up and check it all out and sit with me for a bit (all the while trying to pretend that was normal) and sure enough 30 minutes later here came Matthew. He was SO excited and told us that it had been stolen out of his car about 30 minutes prior to my call, just up the road. The only thing missing was an ipod which we both agreed was much more replaceable than the bills and planner.

The transient waited for him outside and we watched as Matthew walked up to him and gave him ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! the guy started DANCING! he popped his head in to remind me that there's good in doing good, he was so excited! I mean EXCITED! You could tell that was HUGE money to him.

Well, also in the bag was a purse, we didn't see any id so I called the police and asked what I should do with it. They sent a super hunky SPD officer (the ladies in the office opinion not all mine) named Jim (we'll forgive him for his crummy name;) ) who when he got here asked if we'd checked the purse thouroughly, we said no so he started digging. Mind you, this "purse" was a little vinyl bag with a playboy bunny on it and a playboy bunny zipper full of old makeup that we saw. Well he reached into the side pocket and pulled out a business card for Exotic Escorts. Oh yeah. good times.

I asked if he was going to call the escort service to report the missing purse. He laughed a little. Made a couple comments about the oldest profession and Seattle's HUGE prostitution problem and said they probably wouldn't call him back ;)

Good good times today. Gotta love downtown Seattle.