I started myself on a misadventure the other day, but before I go into it let me tell you why I did it.
First, I'm an Eagle Scout from a town of 5,000 people. Not only did I know most people in my town by name or face, I could identify them by car. (Oh look, Joel's working at the Pizza Ranch tonight.) One time I found a wallet on the road and spent the next few hours trying to hunt the guy down. When I found him, I turned down the money he offered me, because that's just the kind of guy I am.
Second, I had had a similar experience to the one I'm about to describe. It was a huge hassle which included several days of searching online, making phone calls and an almost two hour drive to the U-Bus graveyard halfway between downtown Taichung and Taichung port. I was doing my best to save someone that same hassle.
With that preface let me explain to you what happened when I found a cellphone on the bus.
I sat down to find a red cellphone sitting on the seat. I picked it up and looked around for any likely candidates. Seeing none, I put it in my pocket. I wasn't going to steal it. When I lost my phone one the bus, I had no way of finding out. I filed a report, but no one contacted me. I lucked out, my cellphone held a charge long enough for it to ring when someone was close to it in the U-Bus Graveyard. Had they not heard it, I may have had a new smart phone instead of my adequate Nokia. Damn my luck. It does have some pretty rad stickers though.
So I thought to speed up the process, and reduce the phone's chance of going to lost-and-found purgatory, by bringing it to my Taiwanese co-workers and having them call the last dialed number.
The last dialed number was the mother, the mother we found out, of a high school girl. I think the age of her daughter in part lead to some unneeded worry, but let me not get ahead of myself.
Gamma called the woman and asked, "Hello, are you the mother of the person that owns this phone? My coworker found it on a bus and would like to return it to you."
The woman's response was, interesting, "I am her mother, but how do I know you really have her cellphone," or translated into a time and date where caller ID exists, "how do cellphone?"
Gamma and the woman had a little back and forth. "How do I know who you say you are? How can I trust you? I don't know if my daughter's cellphone is really missing." We gave her the school number, which is listed, and said she could call us back if she wanted to make sure.
We transferred operational headquarters over to Three Fates. I, still excited to do the right thing, told her what was going on and that I would be going back to the Train Station later and would be willing to wait and return their phone.
The woman had hung up and called back. Three Fates passed through the "who are you really?" gauntlet only to come to no conclusion. Again the mother hung up and pondered what to do.
At this point some, "You should have just given it to the driver, police, etc." started to float around. I still felt like I made the right choice.
Shortly thereafter, we received a call from her daughter's teacher. The daughter was taking a test and could talk neither to us, nor her mother. The teacher, being a cool headed and impartial intermediary, confirmed we were just trying to help and communicated that to the mother.
We on the other hand had decided to just take it to the police. We told them which police station we were taking it to and where they could find it. Rodog took it over there for me. He waited for fifteen minutes after "someone" was supposed to arrive and then threw in our collective towel.
He gave the phone to a police officer. He explained the situation and the police officer again called the woman to explain the transfer of phone ownership (phownership?)
I don't know what the woman was thinking, but what she said to the officer was, "How do I know you're really a police officer?"
The uniformed man in the police station wasted little time in saying, "You're kidding me, right?"
Now being the Smallville Eagle Scout that I am, it was tempting to say, "What's wrong with these people?" However, I have to say that it's not just cultural. There is more to it than that. Here's my short list.
1. Taiwan media has been filled with stories of con-men tricking housewives, grandparents and other such types into giving away their hard earned cash. In fact an onlooker at the police station lauded the mother saying, "You know people can, do stuff."
2. Population density does some crazy things to people. Taiwan is so dense that a 3 block square neighborhood can have 6 or 7 convenience stores and none of them want for business. I think people do whatever the can to claim a little privacy while running into people everyday and all the time. People aren't less kind or friendly here. They are just used to keeping to themselves.
There is one thing I will put on Taiwan society. Organized crime is alive and well in Taiwan and it's not unheard of for rich people to receive threats of extortion. For this reason that island has it's share of secret rich, people who will buy two ratty looking adjacent homes, then gut the inside to make their own little pleasure palace. From the outside it looks like just any other home, or two homes in this case, but inside is the epitome of luxury. I believe this phenomenon is strictly Taiwanese. So there is a chance that these people were secret rich and were doing their best to not be taken advantage of.
So will I do it again? Will I let the cell phone be or will I try to return it myself? Of course I will try to return the cell phone on my own again, but next time, I'll start by calling the dad.
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