“I used to tell myself that when I chance upon a wallet with cash, I would keep it,” confessed PO2 Pocholo Pamintuan. “But when it finally happens, you’d really think twice about it.”
Pamintuan, a traffic police officer assigned at the Makati Police Station, was one of the three people who found a wallet containing some P20,000 in cash about two weeks ago along J.P. Rizal Street.
He has since been trying to locate the owner, an American national named Kurt John Trezise.
While waiting for the wallet to be claimed, Pamintuan received a commendation on Tuesday from the Makati police chief, Supt. Jaime Santos, who said the former’s honesty was “a rarity in the entire police force.”
“If you get commended for doing nothing, then that’s just a piece of paper,” Pamintuan told the Inquirer. “It’s different when you get commended for doing something good. It raises your morale.”
The officer was then directing traffic on J.P. Rizal near Rockwell mall when he noticed a man approaching a civilian traffic enforcer also posted in the area and giving him something. He then approached the two men.
Pamintuan said the wallet actually looked “more like a pencil case” and was made from nylon-like material. The contents included Philippine peso and Hong Kong dollar bills.
It also contained a photocopy of a passport, presumably that of the wallet’s owner.
Pamintuan then surrendered the wallet to Santos, who later searched for Trezise on the social networking site Facebook.
Santos found a match and sent a private message to the person telling him about the find. He has yet to receive a reply.
Though the case is not yet closed, so to speak, the rules are clear-cut for Pamintuan: “I never thought of keeping it. I was determined to bring it to the police station.”
“Besides, when you think about it, there’s karma in everything you do. And karma is no joke,” he said.