How About A Nice Story? Girl Finds $4K and Gold Rings in Purse and Couldn’t Sit Still Until She Knew It Was Returned To Its Owner

John Patriquin

Abbie Jacobson and Ra Rim. To reward her good deed, a local bank is sending Abbie’s family to Boston to see her favorite performer, Justin Bieber. A Boston hotel is donating accommodations.

A young Maine girl learned last week that honesty pays — sometimes in very unexpected ways.

Abbie Jacobson was walking into a Sam’s Club holding her father John’s hand in April when she let go to pick up a little green silk purse she saw on the ground.

Inside, the 8-year-old Justin Bieber fan found a wad of $100 bills, a debit card, and a stash of gold rings, bracelets, and earrings without a photo ID anywhere in the purse.

There were lots of people rushing in and out of the store, but aside from the name “Ra Rim” impressed on the debit card, her family had no clue who might have dropped the purse.

“Abbie just looked right up at us and without any hesitation, said, ‘We need to find who dropped it — they’re going to be so sad,” Abbie’s mother, Jennifer, told the Daily News.

The family searched the store for Ra Rim, but had no luck, so they called the police.

The police took the purse for safekeeping and the family went to their home in Scarborough, upset that things were still unsettled.

“Throughout the night I was sick to my stomach,” Jennifer said. “I thought, if they’re recent immigrants, they’re not going to know to call the police department and that just made me very sad.”

Meanwhile, it wasn’t until that night that Rim, the owner of the purse, discovered it was missing at her home, about 30 minutes away in Westbrook.

Rim is an elderly woman who emigrated from Cambodia to live with her family in southern Maine two years ago. Because there is so much corruption in Cambodia, Rim was used to carrying all of her valuables near her body in the green silk purse.

She had saved up more than $4,000 dollars to visit family in Cambodia and was doing some last-minute shopping at Sam’s Club to prepare for the trip, only a few days away.

She was buying gifts to bring back Cambodia, a deeply impoverished nation.

When Rim realized the money was missing, she grew very upset, her daughter and interpreter, Chansatha Meas, told the Daily News.

Meas came to the United States only about five years ago, but has already become a citizen and sponsored her parents to come over. She said the family would not have been able to make the trip back to Cambodia without that money.

After a long night’s wait, a phone call came for Rim: It was the bank that issued her debit card.

Turns out, Abbie’s mother called the bank on her daughter’s insistence to find out who owned all the cash.

2012-09-05 08:52:26

Source: http://teapartywire.com/blog/2012/09/05/how-about-a-nice-story-girl-finds-4k-and-gold-rings-in-purse-and-couldnt-sit-still-until-she-knew-it-was-returned-to-its-owner/