When we began summer visits to Ketchum in 1986, then bought a home to settle here permanently 13 years ago after two decades in Phoenix, one striking reputation of the community was the shared trust of people.
Home doors weren't locked. Ignition keys were left in parked cars. Radio station disc jockeys helped reunite owners and lost dogs. Lost belongings were taken to the Ketchum police station.
A personal impression was soon tested by reality. My wallet had fallen out of my coat pocket. It was found and promptly returned by a driver for A-1 Taxi, whom I had to literally force to take a reward for his kindness.
Honesty again was tested last weekend when my wallet fell out of a coat pocket between an Atkinsons' checkout counter and less than 100 steps to my parked car.
When I discovered it missing, I headed to the Giacobbi Square sidewalk entrance, where a man was standing beside Zack, the huge, friendly St. Bernard dog, lounging on the sidewalk.
"You see a wallet anywhere?" I asked.
"Maybe it's under the dog," he said. Then, "Maybe he ate it."
I budged Zack. No wallet. I returned to the checkout counter and Atkinsons' customer service counter. No wallets.
By now, not three minutes had passed. Drats! Predictable self-reproach—all that plastic to cancel, my pilot's license, concealed weapons permit, medical insurance cards. Only $1 in cash, however.
Then a newspaper reporter's instincts kicked in—skepticism, doubt, suspicion.
Something odd about the flip reply of the man standing beside Zack.
I saw him mount his bicycle and head westward. I decided to follow.
While I struggled through stop signs and around slower traffic, he took a zig-zag route. West on one street, north on another, then west again. Was he trying to shake me?
Finally, I turned off First Avenue onto Fifth Street, looked left at Fifth and Second Avenue, and saw him standing at the mailbox, fishing inside his coat, and then depositing something.
I quickly swung into a U-turn. But then he was on his bike and racing away.
On a hunch, I appealed to a postal worker to open the mailbox.
Yep, there was my wallet. Everything intact.
I learned to be more careful with a wallet.
But the man on the bicycle—is he an unwelcome symbol of a town's growth and the arrival of grifters cynically looking for free rides at the price of a community's innate trust in the honesty of neighbors?
Pat Murphy
