Kim Peterson of West Grenwich took to Facebook after her car was broken into while parked in front of HomeGoods at Quonset in North Kingstown Oct. 9:

Yesterday my pocketbook was stolen from my car. My iPad was in it along with many other valuables, but much worse than the pain of replacing the monetary items, is the fact that there were invaluable items (baby pic of my son and a pin I got when on a mission trip several years ago) in it that I can never replace.

She’d gone to Homegoods to return a couple of items. One of them was very heavy, so she took that one first, dropped it off on the counter then returned to her car to get the second item. She had parked in the first row of spaces by the store and had been gone only two minutes.

That was enough.

By the time she returned to her car, which she’d left unlocked between trips, the purse she’d left on the front passenger seat was missing. With it were gone numerous costly items (including the iPad, a Coach wallet, $500 in cash and another bag) but it was the loss of the sentimental items that really hurt.

Fast forward six days.

Richard McNabb of Springfield, Mass., was working construction at 1000 Division Street in East Greenwich (i.e. Dave’s Plaza) when he noticed two handbags while throwing some things into a dumpster near Ruby Tuesdays. He called EG Police and Patrolman Chris Rafferty climbed into the dumpster and retrieved the two bags, both of which both carried identifying information that pointed police to Kim Peterson.

The big money items were of course gone, but her son’s baby picture and the pin Peterson got on a church mission trip to the Dominican Republic were there. As she wrote in Facebook after the items were returned to her:

Thanks to a diligent construction worker (who spotted some of my stuff in a dumpster and called the EG cops) and thanks even more so to the sweet cop who CLIMBED INTO THE DUMPSTER to retrieve the stuff; I now have many of my in-valuable items back!! My boy’s baby pic and my Dominican pin are safely back in my new wallet and my heart!

Moral of the story? There are two: 1. always lock your car doors, and 2. sometimes you CAN rely on the kindness of strangers.