Pennsylvania teenager returns lost wallet while skateboarding | News Today

ELKINS PARK, Pa. (WPVI) – “Everyone loses their wallet, I think, once in their life,” said Nigel Greene. “If you’re lucky, it’s just once.”

He and Elian Ortiz, 15, had recently lost their wallets. However, the two were complete strangers until an act of kindness brought them together earlier this week.

“I stopped here at Walgreens to buy a birthday card and checked my wallet and couldn’t find it,” Greene said. “And I knew I had it when I got in the car.”

At the same time, Ortiz circled his skateboard as he usually does. He just visited Skate the Foundry, a skate shop perched on a hill just above the Walgreens. When he stopped at the convenience store for a drink, he found a wallet sitting alone in the parking lot.

“When I looked through it, it had all these cards, these IDs, all this important information that would be really rubbish if somebody else took it,” he said. “So I was like, let me do the right thing and report it to him.”

Ortiz found the correct address on the driver’s license inside. He plugged it into Google Maps and hit the road.

It was a slightly bumpy road from Walgreens to Greene’s house. Ortiz remembers climbing a big hill and even falling once. But despite their different means of transportation, Ortiz and Greene arrived at the same time.

“It occurred to me that he traveled, oh, I guess it’s maybe almost a mile from that Walgreens to my house to return my wallet,” Greene said. “So I was obviously very grateful. Then I just posted a message on our local community Facebook group. It kind of spread from there.”

Greene’s description of the story has received over 700 likes and dozens of comments from residents of Elkins Park. After a few days of positive feedback, Greene decided to meet Ortiz again at Walgreens and hand him a thank you card.

“We get a lot of stories about the bad things kids do,” he said. “But I think the vast majority of kids, especially in our community, are good kids like Elian and do the right thing even when someone isn’t watching.”

Ortiz hopes to continue doing good deeds and donating his time and resources to the community. The ninth grade student has already started his own landscaping business, Eros and Friends Yard Work Co., and can be found shoveling snow for neighbors this time of year.

“My mom, dad and family, they just told me to always treat people the way you would like to be treated,” Ortiz said. “And they told me to always do the right thing, even if it doesn’t show any value to you.”

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