Losing your wallet typically means spending a couple hours re-tracing your steps, canceling credit cards and accepting the fact that you'll never get the wallet or its contents back.
That was only partially the case for New Yorker Reilly Flaherty, who lost his wallet at a Wilco concert at Brooklyn's Kings Theater last week, USA Today reported.
The 28-year-old Lower East Side resident had left the concert hall for Manhattan when he realized he didn't have his wallet. He then asked the taxi driver to take him back to the venue, where the wallet was nary to be found.
Two weeks later, Flaherty received an envelope containing his credit cards and driver's license, along with a note from the person who apparently found his wallet:
The cash didn't make it back to Flaherty's hands because, according to the anonymous sender, he or she "needed weed."
The wallet — which Flaherty told DNAinfo New York was a minimalist leather wallet made by Brooklyn-based company Death at Sea — also stayed with the anonymous finder since, according to the note's author, it's "kinda cool."
As for retaining Flaherty's MTA card, the sender pointed to the MTA's recent fare hikes as justification.
"I kept...the metrocard because well the fare’s $2.75 now," the sender wrote.
Flaherty's enthusiasm for the returned goods was as tempered as the sender's note.
"Initially when I opened the envelope and read the letter written in what appeared to be drunk 12-year-old boy's penmanship, I was thrilled," Flaherty told DNAinfo New York in an e-mail.
"But then [I] realized the only items returned were useless to me. The credit cards had already been replaced as was my drivers license."
As for the anonymous sender's odd strand of altruism?
"It's kindness cloaked in selfishness," Flaherty said. "This person is likely a big Nickelback fan."
