MANILA, Philippines - Last March 28, at around one o’clock in the afternoon, I was in a hurry to reach the ACSM building on Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati to attend my son’s graduation when my brand-new E51 mobile phone accidentally fell while I was alighting from my van. It was only after a few minutes later when I noticed it wasn’t in my pocket.

So I started calling and sending text messages to my lost phone in the hope that the one who had found it would respond. After waiting for six hours for the finder to reply, I began losing hope of finding it and retrieving my SIM card which, to me, was far more important than the phone unit. But lo and behold, a text message came at around 7 p.m. from a guy named Mark John Tongol, saying his father Lorenzo had found my phone. And so I rushed to where the Tongols live, happy that I could get back my SIM and dazed that there are still a few good men in a country run by people who cannot claim honesty to be one of their virtues.

Lorenzo Tongol, a 59-year-old part-time driver with three children, was driving along Valero Street when he chanced upon my mobile phone lying on the street. He stopped to pick it up and decided to bring it home. Because the man had never in his life owned a mobile phone and so couldn’t operate one, he had to finish his work and, once home, ask his son to contact me. On my way back home, I could still hear the old man’s words: “I can’t claim something that is not mine.”

People like the Tongols are a rare breed. If only people from the government could emulate the Tongols’ honest act, there would be no time wasted on Senate hearings investigating anomalous government contracts. For a change, it would be nice to spend a quiet afternoon watching our country’s progress while eating a hot “borjer” from the kitchen of honest Ben.

—ALICE B. BALANGUE, via e-mail