a nice story

Josh is the cashier on register one at the People’s Food Co-op in Ocean Beach where I support a younger woman named Jolene three hours or so every Tuesday morning. For Josh, the check-out life is a part-time gig. His primary work is taking in and caring for the pets of people going out of San Diego for a while. Mostly dogs. Last Tuesday Josh told me this:

The previous Sunday he’d just arrived at the beach, where he was preparing to take his six-year-old daughter surfing, when his phone rang. A call from home, one of the dogs had bolted out the door and escaped. Josh and his daughter rushed back, not too far, and he began searching through the neighborhood, moving out concentrically on area streets. But he couldn’t find the dog. He returned home and called the dog’s owners, who were vacationing in Palm Springs, to let them know. Then he got in his car and began driving down one street and up another. At some point he saw a woman walking along and stopped and showed her a picture of the dog – all boarded pets get a photo. She hadn’t seen it.

It turns out that woman went onto her phone to the app “Nextdoor” and posted the picture of the dog. Josh could never find the dog and, after a long while, returned home. It was there he received a call from the woman on the sidewalk who said she’d received a call from another woman in the ‘Nextdoor’ community, living up near the crest of Point Loma, far from Josh, and that woman had the dog. Josh got back in his car and drove up there and, most gratefully, retrieved and drove the dog to the safety of home – surfboards and wet suits and howls and yowls all about.

Josh then called the dogs owner’s, who were on their way back to San Diego, and told them the good news. Josh told me, there at register one, the husband wept upon hearing it. He then turned back to Palm Springs to vacation some more with his wife.

A nice story is a nice story.