Trashed wallet accident ends well for tourist

Talk about it

It’s often been said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Rarely has that saying held more truth than during a recent incident in Mitchell.

Michelle Cormack, from Vancouver, Canada, was on a trip across the Midwest that included a stop at the Corn Palace. After leaving Mitchell and driving roughly 200 miles west to Badlands National Park, she panicked. She didn’t have her wallet, and she suspected she had accidentally thrown it in a trash receptacle at the Corn Palace.

Cormack planned a return trip to Mitchell and called the city’s Public Works Department to check on trash pick-up times. She didn’t want to make the trip if her wallet was already in the landfill. “The first thing the receptionist said to me was, ‘Honey, you just hold on. I’m going to get Street and Sanitation to send someone over to check that trash can for you,’ ” Cormack wrote in a Thursday email to Mitchell Mayor Ken Tracy. “I was astounded.”

Fifteen minutes after speaking to the city employee, Cormack received a call from Corn Palace Director Mark Schilling, also a city employee.

The wallet had been found, and he offered to mail it to her. The wallet arrived earlier this week, and Cormack sent a thank-you email to Tracy.

“I thought it was a good commentary not only on city employees but the people of Mitchell,” Tracy said Friday. “I’m grateful to city employees for taking immediate action and digging into the trash and finding somebody’s lost wallet.”

Cormack said in her email that she and her husband will make a donation to the Mitchell United Way as an expression of gratitude.

“Thanks to the wonderfully kind people of Mitchell who would go out of their way, and sort through a trash can, to get my wallet back to me,” Cormack said. “It was a truly above-and-beyond act that I will always remember.”

Tags: corn palace, news, updates, local, mitchell, wallet