Good Deeds Repaid or Paid Forward

For many an act of kindness is its own reward. But these five Samaritans found their selfishness answered in ways they could never have imagined.

He returned he purse and got his life back.

What brought John Silva to the New York Alley was, by his own admission, nothing to be proud of. Silva was looking for a safe place to do drugs. He had been there for only one minute or so when something clearly out of place caught his eye: a brown leather Handbag by Coach, the kind found in high-end stores for well heeled customers. "It was like it materialized out of thin air from nowhere," Silva says. When he picked it up, he found that it had been emptied of everything but an electric bill. "I though, This person is probably missing it right now."

Silva, 35, could relate all too well. One of his few possessions, the sleeping bag he used as his bed in an abandoned house, had recently been stolen. Remembering how angered he'd been by his own loss, he resolved to return the purse to its owner.

He began right away, starting with the address on the bill. It was on the other side of the city, a subway ride and a long walk away. En route, a couple of people offered to buy it from him, but he declined. "I'm returning it to the rightful owner," he told them.

After traveling much of the day and finally approaching the address n the electric bill, he was stopped by a woman on the street. She asked whether she could buy the purse. Again, Silva refused, saying he was searching for its owner. "but I am the owner," the woman said. "that's my purse."

A month earlier, on June 12, 2017 Katelyn Smith, 28, a sales representative for a vascular medical device company, had woken up to find that hr apartment had been broken into and purse stolen. Now she happened across a tall, disheveled looking man clutching it. "If it [had been] a woman, I wouldn't have looked twice," Smith says. "but it was a man, and I could tell he wasn't in good shape. He seemed exhausted and looked sick.

At Smith's urging, Silva told her his story. He'd been in charge of a landscape arcitecture business until 2012, when he was in a car accident that left him addicted to narcotics.

Smith, amazed this stranger had gone to such great lengths to return her bag, asked whether there was anything she could do to help." "I'm a heroin addict," Silva warned. "I don't want to intrude in your life; I'm probably gonna let you down."

Undaunted, Smith gave him her phone number, saying, " If you want help, if you want to go to rehab, call me." She replaced his lost sleeping bag with her own, then drove him back to his neighborhood and left, thinking that would be the end of it. Two days goes by and later that day, she got a call.

Smith realized that Silva was serious about getting better; he even gave her the name of a 28-day rehabilitation facility in Florida he'd heard about -- Florida Center for Recovery. So she dug into her savings account and bought Silva a plane ticket to Florida. While there he'd call her periodically to let her know how things are going. "we were getting to know each other," Smith says. "I heard his transformation over the phone. Every day he would call me for ten minutes or so and it went from this scared, desperate voice to a healthy, vibrant voice."

After 28 days there and a 90 day stint at a rehab program at Daytop Village in NYC ( his stay was paid for with financial aid and his flight home was courtesy of an anonymous donor ), Silva is drug - free. He lives at a residential recovery center in NYC, and Go Fund Me page setup by Smith has covered his rent, groceries, and incidentals. He plans to get his associate's degree in computer technology & architecture. His life is back on track all because once crime victim could empathize with another's loss.