Honest boy returns large sum of money!
I’m sure you’ve all heard of your fair share of horror stories about carjacking and robberies in Malaysia especially from Singaporeans visiting Johor Bahru. But as this story reported in The Star, will prove, not everyone in Malaysia is out to rob you.
This young 13-year-old boy had returned a handbag containing $15,000 and a passport to a Singaporean woman who had dropped it when she entered her car.
A selfless act
Amir Azizan Hashim, a 13-year old student from Batu Pahat was cycling home after running some errands for his mother at a shop in Taman Soga. It was then that he noticed the woman at the supermarket carpark.
He recalls, “I saw her placing her handbag on the roof of her car. But then she got into her car and drove off and the handbag fell off the roof. [I knew I had to do something, so] I picked up the handbag from the ground and chased after the car on my bicycle. I managed to stop her at a T-junction about 200m away.”
He said that when he returned the bag to the woman, she thanked him and offered $10 as a reward but he refused politely saying, “My mother told me that we must not take things that do not belong to us.” This simple act demonstrated that there are indeed some people that still believe that doing good is it’s own reward.
Unwanted attention
He is still trying to get used to the sudden attention that has come his way since the woman called his school to thank him.
His school honoured his good deed by giving him a certificate of appreciation which was presented to him by Deputy Education Minister Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi who made a visit to the school earlier in the year.
Humble and honest
Besides being honest, Amir displayed immense humility with regards to all the attention that he has since received. He says about the attention, “I didn’t expect that returning other people’s belongings could draw so much attention,” especially when it is nothing extraordinary.
What can we learn
This definitely qualifies as a teachable moment. Amir returned the bag without any thought of fame or reward. He returned the bag containing the money because it was the right thing to do and a value that was instilled in him by his mother. This highlights how instilling the right values in our children is important.
It also points to how we need to pay attention to teaching our own children about the intrinsic values of their actions, deeds and things. Because in the modern age where everything seems to have a price, we are seeing less and less people like Amir who seems happy doing what’s right.
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