Team of Calgary Transit bus drivers return senior's wallet containing a large sum of cash

Terrible luck turned into good fortune for a Calgary man thanks to the teamwork of a group of Calgary Transit drivers.

Jerry, a senior who doesn’t want his last name used, was riding the bus to go to the bank Wednesday. When he arrived at the bank, he realized his wallet, which was filled with money, was gone.

“When I got on the bus, I took my wallet out to show my ID,” Jerry told CTV News in an interview Friday. “I’m at the bank and I don’t have a wallet.”

His first thought was that his wallet must have fallen out once he sat down. “I probably put it in my pocket but (only) halfway and it fell out.”

Pritpal Dhillon was driving the bus Jerry was on. Shortly after Jerry got off, a woman tapped on Dhillon’s shoulder and handed over the wallet. Dhillon said he kept the wallet safe.

“I kept it safe in my front side (of bus).”

After reporting the lost wallet to Calgary Transit control, Dhillon’s shift was almost over so, when the time came, he passed the wallet over to the next operator, Franco Portincasa, who also guarded it throughout his shift.

Once the bus finally returned to the garage, a third operator named Jeremy Harper was driving it.

Harper says at the end of his shift, he looked at the wallet and followed the proper protocol, which meant filling out paperwork and examining the wallet’s contents.

“That’s quite important to be as detailed as possible,” said Harper. “When I opened the wallet, I was quite shocked because I saw a lot of the high denomination bills that were in there so I knew this was important to somebody.”

After he counted out the cash in the wallet and wrote down the exact denominations of the bills, Harper says he wrote down details of the contents.

Eventually, Jerry was reunited with his lost wallet and all his money thanks to the diligent work of all the transit drivers.

“I thought, ‘Oh thank the lord,’” Jerry said.