LETTER: Helpful, friendly and honest people live in Bella Vista

On Friday, May 1, four of us went for a canoe trip on the Elk River just across the border in Missouri. Near the end of the float, our daughter's canoe got sidewise just in front of the low water bridge. After banging off the concrete pillar it flipped and then was pinned against the piling. The ladies in the canoe escaped unharmed but the canoe was literally wrapped around the piling and was going nowhere until the water recedes.

There were two late-model iPhones in a waterproof container lashed to the gunwale of the stuck canoe. Any attempt to swim or walk out to the canoe was both dangerous and futile. We pretty much wrote the phones off as lost.

However, the very next day, our daughter gets an email from a friend who had tried to call her saying that they had received a call from a stranger stating they had retrieved her phone and to call them to pick it up. Apparently the incoming call number was displayed long enough to write it down. This was a miracle in itself but the story gets better.

It turns out the phone finders lived in Bella Vista less than 5 miles from our house. My daughter and her friend quickly drove over to meet the recovery team, say thanks and get their phones back. The gentlemen they met explained that they too had tipped their canoe in the same spot and were thrown up against the trapped canoe. They had hung on long enough to see the attached waterproof bag and had retrieved it. The kind souls returned the phones and dry bag to the ladies and would not accept any reward money but asked that the ladies "pass-it-on" to someone they find needing help.

My wife and I grew up in St. Louis where we had houses broken into and cars stolen. We moved here from Austin, Texas, where crime is rampant and returning lost phones very rare. We never would have expected the return of high dollar phones from complete strangers, much less when they were last seen trapped under a bridge in six feet of fast-moving water. I guess this behavior is just par for the course in Bella Vista where helpful, friendly and honest people abound. We are glad we moved here and even more obliged to the neighborly gentlemen that retrieved and returned my daughter's phone.

Clay Merritt

Bella Vista

Editorial on 05/13/2020