Recovered wallet triggers collective act of compassion

By Ramon Dacawi 

BAGUIO CITY -- A lady’s purse found inside a passenger jeepney triggered a collective act of compassion when the founder and her officemates learned the owner was undergoing life-time dialysis treatment for kidney failure.

Joanne Pimentel, a special investigator of the Commission on Human Rights here, said she was on her way home from work to Trancoville when a fellow passenger found a lady’s wallet which she turned over to the civil servant.

Pimentel tried but failed to contact the owner, dialysis patient Fryla Basilio de la Pena of Labueg, Kapangan, Benguet. She turned to the internet and found out that Ede la Pena was a kidney patient undergoing life-time hemodialysis at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

Informed of the find and the owner’s predicament, lawyer Lyndon Morales of the Commission on Human Rights told officemates to pass the hat.

The office headed by Lyman Salvador pooled over P3,000 the staff  added to the wallet’s original content of P322 and then asked the owner to visit and claim her loss and their gesture of support.

“I wanted to meet the wallet owner but I was on field work in Ifugao when she came to the office,” Pimentel said.