A close encounter with honesty

A big-city marketer has a warm view of Salmon Arm residents in general and one in particular.

Dean Tyler, the new marketing director for Lakeview Villas, whose office is on Hudson Avenue, thought he’d lost a vital part of his business life when he recently left his briefcase on a cement barrier in the Inner Core Parking Lot.

Tyler, who was carrying CEO Jeff Arnold’s bag as well, had set his own down in front of a vehicle and neglected to retrieve it and put it in the car.

“My office in a bag was there,” he says, noting the computer contains all his business contact lists, notes and planning as well as personal and family stuff.

Discovering his bag was indeed missing when he and his boss arrived in Vernon, Tyler expressed his concern.

“But Jeff said something like ‘it’s Salmon Arm, and Salmon Arm is full of a lot of good people, and I’m sensing you’ll get it back. Someone will just pick it up and take it home and try to find you in the morning.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Health Quest owner Hank Berkenpas was about to leave the store at the end of the day, when he noticed the bag.

Failing to see anyone else around, Berkenpas walked up to the briefcase, opened one zipper and saw a computer.

“I thought this doesn’t look right, so I took it home to see if I could find owner,” he says, noting he was cautious about what he touched. “There were several business cards, so I actually phoned several of them – all in Vancouver.”

Berkenpas finally got in touch with one woman who knew the name on one of the business cards, but it wasn’t the owner of the case.

“After not hearing anything overnight, I rifled through the case in the morning and found the owner’s name repeatedly throughout the day-timer, but still no phone number,” he says. “So then I phoned the lady again and gave her that name and she said ‘OK, I know him and I’ll call him right away’ and he was here within half an hour.”

Tyler returned later in the day with wine, something Berkenpas says was totally unnecessary.

“I just said to him if it were my briefcase I wouldn’t sleep all night. We tend to carry our lives in our brief cases.”

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