Last Thursday I took a break from studying to go grab lunch. The place I wanted to eat charged fifty cents for credit card purchases under $10, and being as cheap as I am, I went to the nearby ATM to get cash. By the time I got home that night, it was about 10:30 p.m. Exhausted, I took a quick shower, and lay on the couch.

“Time to do nothing,” I said to myself. I went on Facebook, as any normal college student would when he or she is lying on the couch with a laptop in hand. One unread message, it showed. I opened it: “Hey, I found your debit card at the Bank of America ATMs in I.V. If you have not canceled it already, I would be happy to return it to you, Heather.”

First I thought it was a joke, or rather, I hoped it was one. To my surprise, however, I could not find the card anywhere. So I called the number she had left in the message, and asked if I could get my card that very same night. Heather, the girl who had found my card, agreed, and did so with open arms. I went over to her place, we chatted for a few minutes, and I told her I had no idea it was missing, and most likely, would not have known for maybe several weeks or so. “Glad to help,” she said with a smile.

The thing to highlight here is that the money I had on my checking account is all the money I have, which I earn through tutoring economics at CLAS. Heather found the card while it was still in the machine, so had she taken the money, there would have been no way for me to prove to the bank that it wasn’t me who took it.

Too often we talk about how someone pulled our legs, how we cheated on an exam and got away with it, or what unintelligent things our professors or colleagues said that they should not have. But let us remember, right here in our small community, honest people like Heather live, whose goodness may too often go unrecognized, of whom integrity is the defining factor of their character and without whom our community may lose its sense and meaning.