• Editor’s daughter and first time visitor impressed with Davaoeño honesty

  Filed under dchs88
  Mar 24

  Editor’s daughter and first time visitor impressed with Davaoeño honesty
  Mindanano Daily Mirror
  Friday, March 24, 2006
  GIL M. ABARICO

  First time Davao visitor Tina Antonio admits that on the third day of her re-cent visit here, she wasn’t yet able to see the true beauty of this southern metropolis until she lost her purse on board a taxi, almost gave up hope in recovering it—and then, unexpectedly, it was returned to her later, with nothing missing among its contents, including cash, cellphone and im-portant papers.
  Then, equating honesty with beauty, it dawned on her that Davao is truly a beautiful place and Davaoeños are indeed beautifully honest people.

  —xxx—

  She recalled that last Saturday, she took a taxi to go to another place in the city. “I don’t remember his name, but I remember his face. I clearly remember the looks on his face because he surprised me by returning to me a P10 change when I paid my taxi fare.

  “I was surprised”, she said, “because I’m used to Manila taxi drivers who usually don’t give back the change to their cus-tomers.”

  “So, I told him to keep the change” and he e-ven rep-lied “thank you.” La-ter, after realizing that she had left her purse in the taxi seat, she decided to take another taxi to go around the city looking at the faces of other taxi drivers.

  —xxx—

  But finally, she was losing hope and decided to give up and told the driver to bring her back to the hotel where she was staying along C.M. Recto street. But when she reached the hotel, she found her boss and com-panion from Manila, Ms. Ellen Benavides, dialing the number of her lost cell-phone. When it rang, she was able to speak to three taxi passengers and the driver who found her purse.

  At that time, she learned that the passen-gers, namely Earl Her n N. Alentaje, his wife Neljean C. Alentaje, together with their friend Sharon Z. San-chez, who are all residents of Toril district and the driver of Jom-Jom taxi, named Jaime Veloso, were already at the Toril Police Station then and were turning over her purse to the policemen on duty, who were SPO1 Boromeo L. Junio/Desk Officer and SPO1 Francisco C. Paña III/Investigator.

  —xxx—

  According to Ms. Antonio, she rushed to Toril, which is some 30-minute drive from down-town Davao City and re-covered her purse. It was then, because of her hap-piness, that she finally realized the beauty of Davao even if since it was her first time to be here. “I was so thankful and happy that Davaoeños are really honest and very nice since I personally experienced it and so I salute the Dava-oeños—your place is truly beautiful and its residents are really beautiful peo-ple.”

  Incidentally Tina S. Antonio is the youngest daughter of Mr. Tony Antonio, Provincial News editor of the Manila Bulletin.

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