There IS Good in the World!

I work for a non-profit organization.  There have been a couple break-ins over the past couple of years, and it always makes me so mad - who would steal from a charitable organization?  I guess the answer is: people who just don't care, who are under the power of drugs or some other evil influence.  They probably don't even register what kind of building they are robbing.  All they see is dollar signs.  But the truth is, we have very little that would be of any use to anyone other than us.
A couple of weeks ago, our building was broken into again.  They came in through the window of my (shared) office.  They were in and out in under six minutes, and apart from doing some damage here and there when they attempted to get into some other offices, the only thing they were really able to get their hands on was my laptop.  I had absentmindedly left it on my desk, despite the fact that were are supposed to either lock our laptops up in a cupboard or take them home with us at the end of the day.  So you can be sure I felt pretty stupid (as well as angry and violated) that my computer was the one they got.  Our encription and password security is pretty heavy, and we never save anything of a confidential nature to the computer's hard drive, so I was confident they wouldn't get any important client information, but I was still pretty shaken and upset.

Well, apparently on Wednesday, a slightly sketchy-looking dude wandered in and explained that he had done something he wasn't proud of.  Turns out he had bought our laptop on the street for $100 and he'd had a sudden attack of conscience when he figured out where it came from, so he'd come to return it to us!  He explained that he had two children with special needs and they had benefited from services from an agency similar to ours.  I wish I had been there (Lilah's daycare had called me to come pick her up early because of a barfing/scream-crying episode - don't ask).  I would have shaken Sketchy Dude's hand.  He didn't have to bring the computer back to us, and he certainly didn't have to tackle the situation head-on.  He could have left it outside our building for someone to find or even sent it to us by courier.  But he chose to come in and own up to the fact that he'd bought our stolen laptop on the street.

Kinda restores your faith in people just the tiniest bit, doesn't it?