BEDFORD – Chief Robert Bongiorno is pleased to report that the Bedford Police Department recently helped a woman locate a large sum of money that she had lost in the woods in town.
On Thursday, Feb. 6, Lexington resident Karen Einstein was walking in the Old Bedford Reservoir Park in Bedford. Einstein was very familiar with the area, having walked in the woods many times with her fiance.
Einstein soon realized that she had misplaced roughly $1,000 in cash in the woods, and returned to try and find it, but was unsuccessful.
“It was a perfect storm, and I was already very stressed even before losing the money,” Einstein said. “One of my housemates had given me cash for his share of the rent, and I was on the way to the bank to deposit it. When I lost it, I just felt so awful.”
The next day, Bedford resident Steve Kissel came into the Bedford Police Station with the money. He said he found it earlier that day while walking in the woods, and had tried to find the owner himself but was unable to.
After determining that the money belonged to Einstein, through other items that were found with the cash, Bedford Police contacted her and returned the money and items to her.
Bedford Police then arranged a phone call between Einstein and Kissel because she wanted to thank him for returning the lost money. Both individuals quickly realized that they had met before, one year earlier, near the very same spot where the money was found.
“As we were talking, I realized that I had met Karen before,” Kissel said. “We had been walking in those very same woods around this time last year. We had a very powerful conversation.”
Both Kissel and Einstein were experiencing grief after the deaths of loved ones last year, Kissel his mother and Einstein her fiance, and bonded over the experience.
“The conversation meant a lot, but then we went our separate ways,” Einstein said. “For us to be reunited like this, it’s just incredible. From my conversation with Steve last year to all the work he did returning the money, it all comes back to people helping others through extremely difficult situations.”
Einstein said the Bedford Police were also extremely helpful during the entire process.
“From the very beginning they put my mind at ease,” Einstein said. “I would like to thank Sgt. Craig Naylor, Officer Robert Abajian and everyone at the Bedford Police Department. Those woods mean everything to me and losing the money the way I did was terrible, but I’m just so grateful. With everything that goes on in the world it can be easy to give up, but this really restored my faith in humanity.”
Einstein said she offered Kissel a reward for his honesty, but he did not accept any money.
“I’m a lover of the classics, and Greek philosophy teaches that virtue is its own reward,” Kissel said. “I knew I had to make a choice whether or not to turn the money into the police, and believe I made the right one.”
“It’s quite a coincidence that Karen and Steve had met once before in the woods, and we are glad everything worked out the way it did,” Chief Bongiorno said. “This ended up being a very positive situation for all parties involved.”
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