A janitress at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) returned a backpack containing over P150,000 worth of foreign currency, jewelry and gadgets to the overseas Filipino worker who left behind the bag over the weekend.
The backpack, owned by an arrival from Saudi Arabia, was 45-year-old widow Elena Abreo’s third find this year. The two other items left behind by passengers at the Naia Terminal 1 also found their way back to their owners.
For Abreo, who has been with the Naia 1 sanitation office for over 10 years, there should not even be any fuss over returning other people’s things.
“It is just the right thing to do,” Abreo told the Philippine Daily Inquirer adding that, for her, helping people out would be a reward in itself.
On finding the gray backpack around 4 p.m. last Saturday, she said, that the only thing in her mind then was returning it to its owner.
Abreo said that she was mopping the floor near the conveyor at the terminal’s arrival area when she noticed a gray backpack left behind on a trolley parked near an unmanned Customs officer booth. She did not immediately approach the trolley, thinking that the forgetful owner might return for it shortly, and just watched over the bag.
After several minutes, with still nobody claiming the bag, she decided to have its owner paged over the public announcement system hoping that the arrival was still at the terminal.
When there was no response, she turned over the backpack to the Naia Intelligence and Investigation Division (IID), where the lost and found office is located.
Abreo confessed to being surprised by how valuable the things inside the bag were when the IID conducted an inventory of its contents.
The backpack had nearly 600 Saudi Riyal (approximately P6,000); nine brand new mobile phones and tablets; and two sets of assorted gold jewelry. Fortunately, the owner had left behind his expired driver’s license in the bag enabling the IID to get in touch with him.
The owner, who hails from Pangasinan, was able to retrieve his backpack from the IID and thanked Abreo for keeping it safe.
Abreo told the Inquirer that just seeing how grateful and relieved the owner was made her feel good.
She pointed out that it really did not matter how valuable the found items were as long as their owners got them back.
Abreo recalled the first time she found and returned an item, a pouch bag, to its owner. “It was a small pouch bag and the owner, an employee at the terminal, was so thankful,” she said.
In another instance she stumbled onto a laptop bag left behind by a passenger. Abreo immediately had its owner paged over the PA system and was able to return the bag. “The owner,” she told the Inquirer, “was more concerned about the documents in his laptop bag than the computer.”
“It’s enough for me to just try to do good and bring in the blessings,” she smiled.