Good Omaha Samaritan recovers, returns lost wallet

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - If you’ve ever lost your wallet, you know the time-consuming frustration of canceling credit cards and replacing a driver’s license. One Omaha man avoided that hassle thanks to a stranger.

Watching the wonders of Mother Nature with his family, Matt Petersen almost faced the personal turbulence of losing his wallet.

”I’m wondering if when I put the towel up there so the girls wouldn’t slip off, if I put the towel over the edge of it, they pulled everything off, went inside without thinking about it," Petersen said.

Wearing gym shorts, he put the wallet in his trunk and forgot about it until a stranger rang the Ring doorbell on the couple’s door.

“Hi, this billfold was flying in the middle of the road, do you know him?” asked Nate Palmer on the camera footage.

Matt’s wife, Brandy Moore, said yes and thanked Palmer.

“This is the first time I’ve seen the video, I haven’t seen it yet,” Matt said.

When going to the gym, Matt didn’t know his wallet flew off his trunk and onto Fort Street about three miles away until Palmer returned it within a half hour.

“I saw something fly up in the air, and I saw money fly out, so I figured that was pretty important and most likely a wallet, and I pulled over in the apartments, then pulled on the side of the road and collected everything,” Palmer said.

That’s a modest description of a more challenging recovery of the wallet.

Palmer didn’t just dart out into busy Fort Street, grab the wallet, and get out of the way. Cash had come out along with credit cards and other valuables that he found scattered along the roadway.

Palmer said thankfully, other drivers paid attention and slowed down so he could literally pick up the pieces of another man’s personal information.

“He went above and beyond and gathered everything up and put it back in the wallet and also brought it to us,” Moore said.

“I played a little bit of a ‘Frogger’ and something in the middle of the road, but the ID in the middle of the road, there’s no way I’m leaving that,” Palmer said.

”It just goes to show a level of selflessness and kindness you don’t see often today," Moore said.

The wallet return saves Peterson both headache and heartache because it’s a Father’s Day gift with the image of his two daughters etched into the leather.

“It could have been a full day before we even noticed it was gone, and probably would have scattered the house another day looking for it, so pretty fortunate,” Petersen said.

A good Samaritan hands a surprised wife her husband’s wallet they didn’t even realize had gone missing. No longer a stranger to the couple, Palmer said that how he helped them shouldn’t be considered strange.

“If you can be helpful and do the right thing, I think it’s something we should all try to do,” Palmer said.

Besides doing good deeds, there’s another lesson in this story. After moving, Petersen decided he should change his ID to the new address. Otherwise, Palmer would have gone to the wrong house, making it more difficult to find the wallet’s owner.