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From John Armstrong

By Staff | Jan 6, 2016

To The Editor,

My son is a sixth grade math teacher at New Martinsville Elementary School. On Monday, Dec. 21 he was on his way home after school and needed air in his tires and stopped at the Speedway station in New Martinsville. He left his wallet on the air pump and forgot to put it back in his pocket in his haste to get the air in his tires before the time ran out. He left and when he realized he had left his wallet he turned back and went to the station to look for it. He was only gone a short while, but the wallet was already gone.

He asked the girl attendant inside if anyone had returned it and she said no. He asked if there were surveillance cameras and she said there were. She went to the back and when she returned told him they were not working. He called law enforcement, but there was really nothing they could do either.

He had just less than $100 in cash and about $125 in gift cards, some of which were gifts for family members. Losing those things will make it a little harder at Christmas for his wife and three children, but they are not what is really important. His driver’s license, credit cards, coaching pass (he is the golf coach at Paden City), and other items that are hard to replace are all gone.

The credit cards were cancelled within an hour and if the person or persons who has the wallet try to use them they will be flagged. Hopefully they will use them somewhere where the cameras do work and they can be identified illegally using someone else’s credit card. You see keeping the money and gift cards is just the wrong thing to do, attempting to use the credit cards or personal information is a crime.

Two days following the incident, we found out the cameras were working again and a call was placed to the New Martinsville Police Department to see if they would investigate. We have not heard back from them, but are still hoping to do so.

We all do dumb things sometimes and leaving yoru wallet at a gas station pump certainly qualifies. No one is more aware or sick about it than my son.

When something like this happens, you just hope that the person who finds the wallet or purse is a decent, honest person, and does the right thing and returns it the owner. There are way more good people in the world then bad, my son just was unlucky this time and got one of the bad ones.

John Armstrong

St. Marys