How serendipitous - you were that kid's good fortune 😀

You were his lucky penny 🍀

isn't it so interesting when the stars align like that !!!

I bet he was happy that he ran into you! While it's not a university with 25,000+ students, 1,400 is still a large number! Of course, if his photo wasn't flattering on the current ID, he might have been happy to have a reason to get a new one. I feel like I take HORRIBLE photos - I am rarely happy with any photo that someone takes of me!!😂

I like helping people out and YOU certainly did that! What a coincidence.

How great that you were the one to pick it up! It's a lovely trail - I'm there often.

Ha. He was a nice looking young guy. Last name is Park, which i believe is Korean. He was quite tall and had one of those Samurai haircuts. Very polite.

I was thinking about it and I guess the odds are greatly lowered when someone going to look for a lost item and someone going to turn in a lost item at the same place cross paths.

Yes, the stars aligned!

Fun when things align.

Your story reminds me of something that happened to me on a walk with my husband and dog. We happened to stop at a stone wall and DH noticed a cell phone. We picked it up and were talking about where to return it. It was locked but in a few minutes a text came in with a name of a neighbors son! We gave the phone to him to pass on to his friend.

Another phone story. While vacationing in Costa Rica we met up with a realtor to view properties.

Later that day we were walking on the beach and DH realized his phone was missing. We retraced our steps but didn’t find it.

Later that night we got a text from the realtor. The phone was found! The realtor’s assistant was on a FB page Canadian Friends in Costa Rica. The women who found the phone posted the photo of us that DH uses as a screensaver. The realtor’s assistant recognized that it was us!

What are the chances in either case?

How wonderfully bizarre! Lucky kid and fortunate for you that you know it got to the right person and so quickly.

I recently read of someone whose screen saver is something like ”If lost, call xxx-xxx-xxxx“ (his wife’s number). I thought it was a great idea, but I’m not going to do it. That would mean replacing the adorable picture of the grands. Not happening. 😁

The oddest thing i ever found and returned was a parakeet. I was walking down the sidewalk in the city when this bird lands right in front of me. I picked it up and brought it home, which was just around the corner. Two days later there is an ad in the paper for a lost parakeet! An older couple came to my apartment and picked him up. Poor bird went home in a paper bag, but they were ecstatic to get their pet back.

What an awesome coincidence! And so good of you to go out of your way to get it to the person who lost it.

How serendipitous! And the parakeet story is a great visual!

BBSTX, next time, pose the grands holding a sign "if lost, please call ........"

Hiking with my son, when we got to the destination waterfall where there were other hikers congregated, I reported to him that I had dropped my phone somewhere on the rough and rocky "trail." The lady standing next to me held up my phone and said, "Is this yours?" I was so happy to get my phone back.

Nice stories here.

synchronicity

When I was a teenager I lost a ring in a large manmade pond with a sand bottom. The following summer it was found by the one lifeguard who would have known it was mine.

Talk about coincidence!

That was a good story ded. And great timing too. I enjoyed reading all the other posts too. Wish I had a good one to add but nothing comes to mind.

It all depends on how long that ID was there before you found it. I am just glad you went straight there, didn't carry it around for a few days. By then the student would have given up.

I bet he is bragging to all his friends about this wonderful woman who found his ID. Well done, you!

What a great thread! Finding phones is often an interesting thing to happen. I found one at a local park. On the screen was the picture of a very cute baby. So I walked around and found a couple with a cute baby and asked if they had lost their phone. They didn't even know it was missing and were very grateful to get it back.

DH found a phone when he returned to his car on an airport remote lot. It had clearly been there when he parked and just didn’t see it, it was kind of under the car. Because of snow and the state of the phone, it clearly had been there when he parked. We took it to the ”phone store” who were able to get into the phone and contact the owner. It turned out, she and I grew up in the same small town, we didn’t know each other but our mothers did, and I’d met her mother a few times. Anyway, we sent the phone to her home in the neighboring state, and she sent us a Starbucks card.

Last month DH’s phone fell from his pocket into in the boat launch basin. It was a burner he took just to go in the boat, so no great loss. ”and why wasn’t it in the floating crossbody waterproof case around your neck?” ummm… We did check with lost and found several times, lots of other phones (and Stanleys!) but no burner. A few weeks later, the key to his bike lock also fell out of his pocket, also at the beach. (and why wasn’t it in the crossbody case? ummm…) And there was about a three-mile range where it could have been lost. Fortunately it wasn’t a great lock so I drove over with a hacksaw.

The post about the ring made me think of this. I was house sitting for a friend. Since she had inside dogs, I would spend the night there, and then go home and take care of my animals. My husband was working in Louisiana. I came home one morning to find my door open and every drawer in the house pulled open and every cabinet door open, and even the freezer compartments on the refrigerator left open. Someone had been in my house to steal from me.

I had a corner cabinet, and in it was a glass candy jar. I had recently broken my wrist, and had to take off my wedding rings and I had dropped them in that jar. They were in a baggie, and there was about $5 in change in the jar too. The jar was empty....my rings were gone. I knew who did this...a guy my husband hired to help me while he was away. Anyway, for 18 months, I grieved about my rings. I went to every pawn shop around...and no luck.

In the corner cabinet, was also some dishes. There was a vegetable dish with a domed cover. One day I thought to look inside the dish, because sometimes I stash stuff in random places like that. When I removed the domed cover, I could see behind it, a baggie. In the baggie were my rings. When the guy saw that little bit of money in the jar, he didn't realize there was anything in the baggie, and he had crammed it in the corner behind the vegetable dish.

Happy to report, the young man is serving time now for other crimes. This is his 3rd go 'round in prison. I am sorry for his wasted life, but I am happy to have my rings back.

On our vacay, DH ran into a guy wearing a university t-shirt so DH asked him about it..turns out he was one of DH's Dad's students! I was photographing a sunrise and ran into a woman who lived up the street from my cousins, one town down from where I live!

I’m loving these stories! It really is a small world sometimes.

When dad was in skilled nursing, there was a fellow who had a German name and, well, a German look, and I overheard snippets of German and English when he had a visitor. When I saw him I would greet him in German or wish him a happy whatever holiday it was, he would reply in kind. (Thank goodness it never progressed, given my sad second-year German class was 50 years ago). All this to say. I felt a connection to this gentleman. But he was never seated at my dad’s table for meals.

Well, one day my brother had put Pictures at an Exhibition on the sound system for dinner. It was one of dad’s favorites. Afterward, Herr S rolled into the sitting room and commented on it. So bro, Herr S, and I got to chatting. Turns out, he had written a book on architecture and had taught art history at a nearby college. My brother’s alma mater. Where he took art history. Bro realized, Herr S had been his professor. And, dad had been a builder with a background in architecture, and his father had been an architect. Also, this fellow lived about a mile away from me.

Dad passed away a week later, still quite happy to talk about architecture. I really regret not reaching out more to other residents for their stories and connections. Dad’s final year would have been so much richer. And such a thing wasn’t really a specialty among the otherwise excellent staff.

I like these stories very much also and they made me smile, but none of this ever happens to me - in fact the opposite seems more likely to happen, in that I have been mugged several times and have had other things stolen from me when traveling and have never had anything that I have lost returned to me. I don't think I have found anything of value that belonged to anyone, although I did find fifty pesos on the street in Mexico City once, but I had no idea who might have lost it.

I have a difficult time finding things that I have misplaced in my house many times.

What I want to know is how did the lifeguard know that was Lacey's ring? :)

A couple of years ago I was cleaning out the deep freeze and while bent over I found a phone. Wasn't mine. It was the phone dh lost a year earlier and had to buy a new one. That's my only phone story. Wait, I really embarrassed myself when I tried calling DS on his cell, and a lady would answer and she told me that I had the wrong number. I told her I didn't. She hung up on me. I watched my finger press his phone number and she answered it again and said this is NOT your son's number! After she slammed down the phone, what an itch, it dawned on me I kind of did call the wrong phone number, but I was off by only 1 number. :) I felt I owed her an apology so I called, she picked up the phone and slammed it back down. Yep, itch alright.

Oakley, you should have changed your caller id to I’m Sorry.

Lars, Im sorry you were mugged and never retrieved any of your stolen items.

I think a big part of the reason i tend to find stuff is that i walk looking down. One time a nice security guard at the university where I worked said i should keep my head up and be more aware of what’s around me.

A fellow at that same university had a display in his office of gloves that he had found. It was pretty impressive.

After having broken my ankles 3 x from not looking down where I was stepping, I now say, if I was hiking, I'd walk right into a bear as I'm always looking at each footstep and not ahead.

Marilyn, I'm so glad you have your rings back.

Dedtired, it wasn't a parakeet but a few years ago my neighbor found a parrot. Or, it found him. He was doing something on his roof and out of the blue (literally, dropped in from the sky) an African gray parrot landed on his shoulder. I don't know how he kept his composure or his footing, it was not a small bird. He went inside, gave it some fruit, nuts and water - it was hungry and thirsty - then began looking for an owner. It was quite social, seemed to like men over women. It was about three days later when someone claimed it. Animal Control hadn't really wanted it and asked them to foster. The owners lived several blocks away and a long time house sitter had let it escape while they were away. I think otherwise we may have had a parrot next door, neighbors house cats had accepted it being in 'their' kitchen quite calmly and paid very little attention to it.

Well I'm currently on a solo camping trip. Not locally or nearby I practically have the entire campground to myself. The only people I've spoke to outside the camp owner were a couple of ladies I ran into you at the bathhouse last night. Today I went to swim and float in the river. Once again the only two people I saw were the two ladies who were stopping at the river for one last time before they headed home today. Where is home? Same city as mine.

Oakley, he was a friend, had seen the ring the previous year and I had told him I lost it in the water. But he was the only lifeguard who would have known it was mine and it was his shift when it was found and turned in. It wasn't a valuable ring, but what a coincidence.