A Lost Wallet at the Electric Christmas Parade: Thank You to Those Who Helped Me Find It

This is a bit belated, but I’ve been meaning to share my thankfulness for a group of men with the St. Charles Public Works Department who helped my family out over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Like many local families, my husband, 2-year-old son and my husband’s family headed out to the Electric Christmas Parade on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My husband and I were running late to meet my husband’s family and our son was hungry and crabby as we battled the crowds to meet others. Needless to say, a crabby toddler plus crowds doesn’t always make the best mix.

I had my husband’s wallet in my coat pocket as I went to go get a snack for our son. After I got back, and as I was watching the parade, I noticed the wallet was missing. The streets were packed. I spent the next half-hour backtracking my steps and trying to locate it. After I’d searched, I noticed a group of public works employees standing on a truck near where we’d been watching the parade.

I approached one of them, told him what happened and asked if he might be able to keep an eye out for the wallet while they were cleaning up after the parade. I gave him our phone number. I went back to my family, and noticed the group of guys had gotten down to start looking around. About 10 minutes later, I saw one of the men holding up a wallet and waving at me. Sure enough, it was my husband’s wallet. It had fallen out near where we were standing and they had spotted it among the crowd.

To the local public works employees who helped out that night, I don’t think I thanked you all enough -- but you saved us some worry that night over whether someone else was racking up purchases on our credit cards and saved us the trouble of contacting our bank over the holiday weekend to put holds on our accounts. Not to mention the time it would have taken my husband to go to the DMV to get a new driver’s license.

So, thank you! We truly appreciate it.

Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to let all readers know that if you want to share your gratitude this holiday season, whether it be over a large act or small act of kindess, you can do so by posting directly about it on the Patch boards on any of the Patch sites. I know there are plenty of stories of awesome people doing great things in area communities and we would like to share those stories with our readers. You can post directly to Patch by visiting this Patch page. If you’ve got an account, log in and you will see an option to post to our boards. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for one. Once your item is posted, shoot me an e-mail at amie.schaenzer@patch.com with the link to your post and I'll try to share these stories of gratitude on our Facebook pages.

• Amie Rowland, Patch.com editor