April 2009

Maynor and a lost phone

“Hopefully, word will get around”

Maynor Escovar is still learning the ropes when it comes to life in the States, and he wasn’t aware of the front-page assertion in the Sunday, January 11 edition of the Washington Post that, even in Takoma Park, there is a new get-tough attitude toward immigrants because presumably they are more likely to be criminally active.

Fluent only in Spanish, Maynor isn’t a reader of American newspapers. Besides, he is at work before 7:00 in the morning, reporting to a gas station on Piney Branch Road. He was at his job the following Saturday when he saw a man drop his cell phone while pumping gas and then drive away.

Maynor picked it up, flipped it open and looked for the list of phone numbers that could be automatically dialed. He began calling each number. A receptionist at a real estate office in Silver Spring answered and transferred him to a Latina agent.

Extrapolating from the numbers displayed on the phone the agent was able to determine that it belonged to the head of the agency’s property management department, Bill Kelly, who lives in Takoma Park. As arranged in Spanish by the agent, Bill then met Maynor at the gas station the next morning and retrieved his phone.

Bill, who speaks only English, said afterward, “I gave him a monetary reward, and he was pleased by that. But he was also quite surprised. He didn’t seem to expect that.”

Bill’s wife Laurie added, “Hopefully, word of this incident will get around, and residents here can have more faith in one another.”