The Golden Rule, Slightly Tarnished

But some people never sign that pact. Some people exploit their roles as finders to make a quick buck. Some people are Bad Samaritans.

Jeremy Wilson-Simerman, a congressional staff assistant, left his cellphone on a Red Line Metro train and encountered his own Bad Samaritan. The phone's finder wanted a reward. Wilson-Simerman suggested $10. The finder suggested $450. Wilson-Simerman suggested the finder was crazy. He never saw his phone again.

Bad form, says Davy Rothbart, editor of Found, a magazine featuring photographs of lost objects. "It's a violation of the human code if you find something that's clearly important to someone else and you don't return it," he says.

Rothbart has been on the receiving end of that violation. A few years ago the Ann Arbor, Mich., resident left his phone in a bar. When he dialed the number, a voice cackled before hanging up. So Rothbart notified his phone company, at which point he learned that whoever found the cell had used it to call some 40 numbers. Rothbart started to dial them, one after another, using his best Threatening Guy voice. "I'd say, 'Yo! Your friend stole my phone! The police are going to come to your house unless you make him give it back!' "

Finally, Rothbart tracked his phone to a guy named Mike, who lived a few miles from his house. He drove to the address and confronted Mike, who copped to using the phone and begrudgingly gave it back.

Then Mike had a request, says Rothbart. "'He goes: 'Well, can I get a reward for finding it?' I was like, 'Dude. No.' "

But Rothbart, patron saint of found objects, the man who once tracked down the owner of an un-addressed photo album because he couldn't bear someone losing family memories, does not believe the rules of returning are black-and-white. " Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact," he says. "Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff. That's not evil."

For support of this dubious statement, ask Andrew Cohn. The Los Angeles writer was cleaning up his back yard after a party the night before when he spotted a wallet on the ground. It contained $40. "I'd just spent $500 on the party," says Cohn. "I figured the money was this girl's contribution." He removed the money but left the wallet on the ground.

"If you expect someone's going to return your wallet with all the cash, you're probably a little delusional," Cohn says. Taking the dough might not have been the most ethical course of action, he admits, but it's not a sin.

"It's a sin," says the Rev. Thomas Kalita, pastor of St. Peter's Parish in Olney. "Any time a person holds onto property that he or she knows belongs to another person without the intention of giving it right back [he] is dishonest."

It's all there in Deuteronomy 22:1-4 (not the part about cellphones, but the general concept), illustrated with those all-purpose biblical examples, farm animals. In part: "If you see your brother's ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take it back to him. If the brother does not live near you or if you do not know who he is, take it home with you and keep it until he comes looking for it. Then give it back to him."

The passage does not, hopeful reader, conclude with "after demanding 50 shekels."