January 25, 2023 It was the most careless thing I’ve done in months. My family and I were in Las Vegas for a few days last week. On the last full day of our trip, temperatures were around 40 in the morning but warmed to over 60 by afternoon. I was wearing two shirts and a hoodie, so I stopped to take off one of the shirts. I set my phone on a nearby ledge and made the wardrobe change. Immediately after, my family and I crossed a pedestrian bridge. It was when we reached the bottom step on the other side of the bridge that I realized I didn’t have my phone. Only 3 to 5 minutes had passed since the clothing change. My husband, son and I dashed back to the spot where I had removed the layer. No phone. I started trying to log into my husband’s phone to track mine, while my husband and son searched the area. “Lose something?” said a voice from behind me. I turned around to see an unhoused individual – a homeless man – charging his phone at an outlet nearby. He repeated the question. “Yeah,” I responded. “I lost an iPhone in a black Otterbox case.” “Here you go,” the man said, smiling as he reached into a sweatshirt pocket and extended a familiar phone in my direction. “I found it over there. I figured I’d wait around here for 20 minutes, and if no one came back for it, I had a new phone.” After a week in major cities, we had seen our share of unhoused individuals. Between the sheer magnitude of the issue and the number of people trying to get money from you in Vegas, it became easy to look past people as though they didn’t exist. Then God gave me a reminder that they exist, they’re human and they’re good. That man, Jason, saved me from losing a day of photos and memories. Maybe I’m naïve, but I believe that every human is intrinsically good. They’re good because they’re made in the image and likeness of a good and loving God. Sometimes I just have to be reminded to act according to those beliefs. |
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