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A Lawyer Who Often Helps Those in Need is Helped When He is in Need, Restoring Faith in Humanity.

So, imagine this scenario. A father and his family, wife and three kids, head off for a wonderful weekend of skiing. All is well, and the weather is good. On the first morning, they ski for four hours. When they decide to go in for lunch, the dad realizes his watch has fallen off and is gone… He searches the area in which he is standing, checks his jacket and gloves hoping it fell off into his clothing; no luck.

Now, if it was a G-Shock or a Timex, maybe even an Apple watch, that would be one thing. In fact, surely some tracking system exists for an Apple watch to be found. Thank god for modern technology.

This lost watch, however, is a Bremont Terranova: a limited edition of 300 watches, made to memorialize the British Polar explorer Ben Saunders, who made the first completion of Scott’s expedition (1795 miles from the coast of Antarctica to the South pole and back) wearing a Bremont Terranova. The dad is devastated and of course reports the watch to lost and found. Days go by and still no luck. He is resigned to the fact that the watch is lost.

The ski vacation seems ruined, his wife and kids are upset. The weekend ends and they return home.

This dad I am discussing happens to be me.

So I return home and call the watch dealer to tell them. They advise that if anyone ever sends the watch to them for servicing, since I am registered as the rightful owner of model 297 out of the 300, they would return it to me. I assume this will never happen, and it doesn’t. Something much more special happens.

This past Tuesday morning, I got a voicemail from Stratton Mountain that a young man, Christian, found the watch and called them to say that he has it and wishes to return it to me. I am shocked.

I immediately call Christian Prestipino, a young college student at SUNY Maritime in the Bronx. When we speak, he tells me that he found it just inside the lodge area and the strap had separated. He put the strap together and put the watch in his pocket. He later looked online and realized just how limited and expensive the watch was. He felt obliged to reach out to the ski resort and return it. We agree to meet that night at his school. I drive there with my wife and as promised, he hands me the watch out of a soft case he had put it in, just to make sure it was protected.

I thank him and give him what I consider a small award. He refuses at first, but then accepts graciously.

As I drive away, my wife and I look at each other and are just shocked at what a wonderful thing this young man has done. We think of his amazing upbringing and the moral values he must have been taught as a child.

As an attorney at Leav & Steinberg, LLP, I am in the position to help the less fortunate, or those who have been harmed by the wrongdoing of others. This time, I was the one who had lost something, and it was returned through the kindness of a young man who went out of his way to return the watch to me.

I can’t thank him enough and truly hope that anyone who reads this “pays it forward” too, as they say.