A Good Samaritan in York County

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Times are tough. Imagine walking through a parking lot right around the holidays and stumbling across $130 in cash – if no one was around who might have lost it, would you put the cash in your pocket?

This is just the situation York County resident Darren Simons found himself in on Monday. He was walking out of the social services building after having had to ask for some public assistance because an accident had kept him from working. On his way to the car, he saw a hundred dollar bill, a twenty, and a ten lying on the ground.

“It’s not right to take money someone else earned,” he says, simply. “I wanted to do the right thing.”

He scooped up the cash and walked over to the sheriff’s office in the same parking lot, told them his name and number, and told them he wanted to make sure the money he found got to the person who lost it.

Simons had a head-on car accident recently that totaled his truck and injured him. This came after he’d been laid off twice from jobs in construction. He couldn’t bring himself to draw unemployment after he was laid off, so he had taken up painting to help support his wife and 11-year-old son.

With a broken wrist from the accident, painting was out of the picture. So was his drumming, which was his other paying gig.

Why didn’t he just keep the cash he found, and chalk it up to an early Christmas gift for himself and his family?

“It wasn’t mine,” he says. “I was sure it belonged to someone who really needed it.”

The cash belonged to Kristen Eckstein, who is a co-supervisor with Child Protective Services. She was walking into work Monday morning and she says she was busy and thinking about all she had to do at the office after being away for a week, and didn’t notice the money was missing. She didn’t even stop to think about the cash she had until hours later.

Some of the money was her own, and some of it was a donation on behalf of Eckstein’s co-workers intended for the Shop with a Sheriff program.

She retraced her steps over the day and found $20 outside, part of the $150 she’d had that morning.

“It was cash. I didn’t think I’d see it again,” she says. She felt horrible.

When she stopped by the sheriff’s office to let them know, they gave her Simons’ name and number, and he got right back in his vehicle and delivered the money to its rightful owner.

“I was just so humbled and astounded by his honesty,” says Eckstein. “He could have just taken it.” In her field, it’s easy to get disheartened, she says, “but this just reminded me that there is good in the world. It’s such a blessing, and inspiring.”

Eckstein’s office and the Sheriff’s office are brainstorming a way to show their appreciation to Simons.

Sergeant Dennis Ivey of the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office sent out a brief press release about the story, which, he points out, is a nice change from his typical press releases about crimes. “It is nice to know, especially this time of year that there are honest, selfless people in our society like Darren Simons,” says Ivey.