Family finds wallet, restores dying woman’s hope
By HATTIE BERNSTEIN, Telegraph Staff [email protected]Published: Wednesday, Mar. 21, 2007 ENLARGE PHOTO Staff photo by Don Himsel Leah and Thomas Dixon of Brookline were returning from a trip to Florida when she found a wallet near his seat on their plane. The family returned the wallet, with $2,000 in cash inside, to its owner in Florida who had lost it while traveling from Albany, N.Y., after her father’s funeral. Children, from left, are Lucas, 1, Kiernan, 5, and Thomas, 1. Order this photo |
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Lori Bari has never met Leah Dixon. But as long as she lives, Bari will be indebted to Dixon, a 33-year-old Brookline mother of three.
Bari, 43, of Ocala, Fla., was diagnosed and treated for colon cancer last August and is undergoing chemotherapy to fight the cancer that has spread to her liver.
Her doctors have told her, “Don’t make plans” and estimate she has four to eight months to live.
On March 10, she was flying back to Florida from Albany, N.Y., after tending to her 70-year-old father, Mario Odorizzi, at his deathbed and burying him. That’s when Bari lost her wallet.
She didn’t realize she had lost it until she reached the parking gate at the Florida airport.
In addition to a large amount of money, her wallet contained the gold cross her father had worn for 30 years, a cherished remembrance Bari had planned to pass to her son.
“I was frantic,” she said during a telephone conversation Tuesday morning. “I had $2,000 in cash in the wallet, all my credit cards, my Blue Cross/Blue Shield card.”
While Bari scrambled to contact the airlines, the wallet sat tucked between an armrest and the window, undiscovered for four days.
It wasn’t until Dixon, her husband, Thomas, and their three young children,were flying back to New Hampshire from Florida on Southwest Airlines, that Dixon discovered the wallet.
“My 1-year-old threw a bag of peanuts between the window and the seat,” Dixon said, recalling how she bent over to retrieve the nuts and found Bari’s wallet.
Dixon said she assumed the wallet belonged to the passenger seated behind her. But after she looked at the photograph on the driver’s license, she quickly realized it didn’t match the passenger’s face.
Her heartbeat quickened when she found $2,000 in cash tucked into the section reserved for bills.
“Oh my God. Someone is going to be really, really worried about this,” she thought.
After the plane landed, Dixon tried to find Bari’s phone number, which is unlisted. She also called Bari’s credit card companies, the Ocala police department and the phone number on a personal check she found with the cash.
As it turned out, Bari’s boyfriend had written the check, and after Dixon called him, he contacted Bari.
The mystery was solved.
“She is a hero,” Bari said. “What are the chances of someone finding it and sending it back?”
Dixon said she cried after she and Bari spoke by telephone and Bari told her story.
“I just couldn’t believe it, and she was so worried about the cross, not the money,” Dixon said.
Bari offered Dixon a reward for her trouble. But the mother refused.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” she said, crediting her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness for her honesty.
But Bari said Dixon gave her hope, the first she has had since her cancer was diagnosed.
“She renewed my belief in humanity, in Christianity, in kindness,” the Florida woman said. “She didn’t just give me my father’s cross back. She gave me much more.”
When she dies, Bari said, she will carry with her the knowledge she leaves her 18-year-old son in a world where “people can still be proper, and kind, and ethical,” all because of Dixon.
“I really needed to know that,” Bari said. “If I have eight months or four months, I’m leaving my son knowing there is goodness and kindness. I’m leaving my son knowing that.” |