SAMARITAN'S HELP MAKES 12-YEAR-OLD A HAPPY CAMPER
By Victor Volland Of The Post-Dispatch Staff
As Julie Jacob was driving her daughter to Girl Scout summer camp in Pevely on Sunday, she
heard a sliding noise in the bed of her open pickup. Moments later, she saw in her rearview
mirror a woman hoisting daughter Christina's navy blue vinyl suitcase, her white sneakers
still tied to the handle, onto the median on Hampton Avenue.
Jacob realized that the suitcase had slid out the back, but by the time she maneuvered
through traffic and got back to the spot, the suitcase was gone. Christina, 12, burst into
tears. Jacob panicked. Everything was in that suitcase: all Julie's clothes for the week;
nearly all her camping gear; her favorite cap; and her wallet with $40 she had saved for
camp.
"We were both devastated," said Jacob, leader of Christina's Girl Scout troop in the Dogtown
area. They made a quick detour to Kmart and Walgreens to restock. About $100 later they
continued the trip to Pevely. What they didn't know was that the suitcase had been picked up.
How it got back to them is a story of a good Samaritan and a Good Fairy. The latter is a
former Girl Scout leader who tracked the Jacobs down.
The good Samaritan is Bob Thomas, a freight company clerk from Dogtown who was on his way to
his mother's home in Mehlville Sunday afternoon. He saw a woman lifting a suitcase on the
concrete median. He thought the best bet was to pick it up and try to find the owner. When
his mother, Dorothy Cashen, opened the large suitcase, there was a shock of recognition.
"I just knew it had to be a Girl Scout who was going to be away from home for a while," she
said. "Everything was so neatly packed and in place." The giveaway was the mesh bag with the
Girl Scout canteen, mess kit and flashlight.
Cashen, 85, a Girl Scout troop leader more than 40 years ago, remembered that Scouts are
instructed to mark their names on their gear. Sure enough, the single name "Jacob" was
scrawled in Magic Marker on the bottoms of the mess kit and a "sit-upon" cushion Girl Scouts
make for outdoor activities.
Undaunted by the 62 listings for Jacob in the St. Louis phone book, she spent an hour calling
numbers before reaching a woman who said her niece had left that day for Girl Scout summer
camp. Cashen called the home of Terry and Julie Jacob and left a message on their answering
machine.
"It was like a little miracle," Jacob said of the phone message awaiting her. "It was
especially nice getting our suitcase back from someone in Scouting - like from someone in
your family." She drove back to Camp Cedarledge on Monday and delivered the suitcase.
Cashen raised three foster children, all of them Boy or Girl Scouts, and was a Cub den mother
and an assistant Girl Scout leader. Several of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have
been Scouts. She and Thomas declined a reward offered by the Jacobs.
"You don't take a reward for things like that," Cashen said. "Bob kept saying, `Oh, that poor
kid, she's going to be in such trouble when she gets to camp and no suitcase.' He was so
happy it caught up to her."
:)