Trike driver, 3 guards cited for honesty

Three security guards of SM City Supermall in Marilao, Bulacan and a tricycle driver in Surigao City have one thing in common that everyone should emulate — their honesty. And the local folk are feting them for that.

Security guards Rolando Mistola, 28; Minard Quiaoit, 27; and Marcelo Paddayuman, 22, stood proud as Marilao officials bestowed on them the "Natatanging Marilenyo" award during the town’s 210th founding anniversary last Friday.

Sheryl de la Rama, SM City Supermall’s public relations officer, said the three, while on their regular rounds, found a bag containing P300,000 in cash and valuables in an unattended shopping cart at the mall’s parking lot.

They promptly turned over the bag to the mall’s customer relations office. All three humbly refused the reward offered by the happy owner of the bag.

The mall’s management also commended the three guards, as they did to SM City Supermall employee Wilfredo Garcia who returned a bag containing P700,000 in cash and checks last year.

Meanwhile, municipal employees of Burgos, Surigao del Norte heaved a sigh of relief when tricycle driver Efren Mosa, 20, returned a bag containing more than P400,000 for their salaries which municipal treasurer Delia Febra had left in Mosa’s vehicle on the afternoon of April 11.

Mosa recalled that a fellow tricycle driver called his attention to the green bag, which was about to fall from his vehicle.

Mosa said he returned to the spot where Febra alighted but she was already nowhere to be found.

DxKS-RPN anchorman Mario Simurlan, to whom Mosa returned the bag on Holy Thursday, said the driver had entrusted the bag to some friends not knowing it contained money.

When counted by Febra, Simurlan and other witnesses at the radio booth, the money amounted to P434,500, and as Febra intimated, was short of P15,700.

But Mosa and his parents said they never touched the money. Nevertheless, Surigao City Mayor Alfonso Casurra said 98 percent of the money was intact and Mosa deserved to be commended for his deed.

"Who knows how it got lost and the exact money? It’s the bank alone which can attest as to how much Mrs. Febra withdrew and received," said Casurra, who promised to give Mosa, a high school junior, a scholarship.

Surigao del Norte Gov. Robert Lyndon Barbers said he and his brother, Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, would give Mosa a new tricycle.