NYC cabbie, tipped 30 cents, returns bag full of diamond rings.

[ohiosmith]

The Associated PressPublished: February 7, 2007

NEW YORK: A taxi driver returned a black bag carrying 31 diamond rings to a passenger who had earlier paid him a 30 cent tip on an $11 ride.

Hours after Osman Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh, had dropped off the passenger, he tracked her down through a flurry of phone calls and returned the bag, which she had left in the taxi's trunk.

The unidentified woman, who said she was a jeweler, offered a $100 reward. Osman reluctantly accepted the money to cover the fares he lost while tracking her down.

Chowdhury said he never even thought of keeping the gems.

"All my life, I tried to be honest," he said. "Today is no different."

"I'm proud of what I did so that people know New York taxi drivers are honest," he said.

Chowdhury picked up the woman at a hotel in midtown Manhattan and drove her to an apartment building several blocks away. She gave him $20 to pay the fare and asked for $9 back, and he discovered the bag hours later.

"I saw flashing, and I said, 'Oh my God! Diamonds!'" Chowdhury recalled. "I was shocked. I was trembling."

He and the dispatchers at his taxi company found a small luggage tag with a Texas telephone number they called — the home of the woman's mother in Dallas.

The woman, who said she was a jeweler and asked that her name not be made public, got back the gems on Monday.

[mark414]

1. what a cheap skate, that woman

and what a better man than me, that cab driver

[AllegroRondo]

2. the woman asked that her name not be made public

probably so the jeweler she works for doesnt fire her ass for leaving it in the trunk in the first place.

[MissMillie]

3. He deserved more, for sure

Mr. Chowdhury is a good guy. My guess is that he's such a good guy, he wasn't even thinking about what was in it for him. Which makes his actions all the more admirable.

I hope good karma catches up w/ him. But even if it doesn't, we know he's a man who sleeps well at night. (I have a sense that it will.)

[redqueen]

4. I don't know what to think about his generous assumption...

that bad tippers either forget or are drunk.

I want to think good of it, but my ever-growing cynical side says it's really just naive.

[ohiosmith]

5. Possibly drunk or forgot. In my experience, lousy tippers are either too poor to tip appropriately

or cheap bastards who have theirs and are going to keep as much of it as they can.

[treestar]

6. Aww, what a great thing to do

I hope this poor guy has his green card.

[madinmaryland]

7. I assume the woman is a devout Bush supporter..

[Nickster]

8. A 100 bucks reward for a bag of 31 diamond rings? Wow! n/t