Pass the purse

For Debby Hagen, Christmas came Dec. 27 this year.

That was the day she finished her errands at Shopko, pushed her cart out to the store parking lot, got into her car and drove off.

Sound like a typical day in the life of a busy woman?

Far from it. Because when Debby Hagen drove away, she left her purse behind in her shopping cart.

"When I got home and started to unload things, I thought I must have put my purse in the trunk," Hagen said. "But then when I realized it was really and truly gone, I drove right back to Shopko and talked to the service-counter girls there, but they said no one had turned it in. I also reported it stolen to the police.

"I had so much stuff in there. There was cash, a few rings, credit cards, my passport and some medication I needed. I just prayed I'd get at least some of it back. You know, I've just had an incredible six months of good luck and I was afraid it was all going to end that day."

Hagen said that after a few hours passed, she had started losing hope. But she then received a call that turned her day inside out. It was from her daughter, Patty, who was in San Francisco.

A Facebook friend of Patty's had seen a posting on both the Crazy Love and the Shop 'n Swap pages saying that a woman in Post Falls had "found something very important of Debby Hagen's" and that if anyone knew Debby, they should contact the finder so she could return it.

Patty's friend recognized the name and called Patty to let her know. Then Patty called - you guessed it - her totally shocked and amazed mother.

The woman in Post Falls was Pam Borek, the good Samaritan who found the purse.

"I was out shopping with my sons, Nickolas and Jonathan, when we saw the purse right out there in the open in the shopping cart," Borek said. "My husband and I have always tried to teach our children to do the right thing, so we took it home with us because I wanted to make sure it would get back safely to its owner."

As soon as they got home, Borek looked inside the purse and tried unsuccessfully to find Debby's number in the phone book or online. It was her sons who suggested she put it on Facebook.

"Just a few minutes after I posted it, a Facebook friend of Debby's daughter contacted me and said she could get ahold of her friend and right after that Patty called me to give me Debby's number.

"I called Debby the instant I got her number and she was just so excited that somebody honest had tried to track her down with Facebook. And my boys were excited, too, when we found her. They were just so happy and proud she got it back. It taught them a lesson about always trying hard to find the owner."

Borek said she hadn't expected a reward and that just seeing the happiness on Hagen's face had been reward enough for her.

But Hagen insisted she accept one. "Everything in that purse was exactly the way I'd left it," she said. "Did I give Pam a reward? You'd better believe I did."

Borek said that this had been a great way to end a rough year for her family. It was a year that involved a bad car crash in which two family members were injured.

"But you know," she said, "if somebody found my purse, I would want them to do the same thing for me that I did. And, really, a hug would have been plenty enough reward.

"The way my family sees it, it was kind of a late-Christmas miracle."