Desperately Seeking Salem

My husband and I like to think of ourselves as quiet superheroes. Quiet because we ask for no reward other than a chance to do good, and superheroes because we go out of our way to spread that good karma.

I once picked up a cell phone an on a subway in Munich, Germany, and called the first couple of strangers in its address book to try to track down the phone’s owner, who was, by then, on a flight to Mallorca, the 17th German state.

Just last month, I grabbed a purse that had been stashed in a grocery cart at Keizer Station and turned it in. It was overflowing with stray bills and receipts — likely belonging to a harried mom who forgot it there.

My do-gooder’s impulse continued unabated until this week, when a little license plate caused a rift in our otherwise Incredible household.

Adam was down at Bush Pasture Park playing ultimate as usual when he happened upon an Oregon license plate in the south parking lot. It was strewn upside-down on the ground near a group of cars, all of which were acceptably plated.

“Da… nah nah NAH!” Adam to the rescue!

So he brought it home, to me to deal with.

Adam’s original plan was to take the plate himself to ODOT, and drop it off for the Department of Transportation to deal with. But because our work week started the next day, and I work from home (read: can let errands interrupt business), I decided to drop it off at the Salem police station located on Liberty Street.

I went to the counter, where I had view of a room of people working behind a glass window. No one helped me.

Five minutes later, someone sauntered over.

“I’d like to drop off this license plate I found.”

“I can’t take that from you. I’ll have to get someone who can,” she said.

She filled out a pink form, filed it in front of me, and went back to her desk.

Ten minutes later, another woman walked by, and offered to help me.

“I can’t take that from you. I’ll have to get someone who can,” she said. And then she pulled out another pink form.

“This isn’t even my plate,” I told her. “We found this — we’re just dropping it off.”

“It’s private property, and we have to document the chain of possession,” she explained.

Big sigh. Then, she pointed to another set of windows to the left, both of them closed.

“Someone will meet you there who can take it.”

Twenty minutes later, someone did meet me. I handed the plate to her. I didn’t sign anything, I didn’t exchange any words with her. She opened the window, took the plate, and was gone.

That’s when things got hairy. You see, it turns out Adam was kind of pissed at me for dropping the plate off at the police station. Now they have your name, he said. If there’s a crime involved, you’re involved.

So the argument ensued. Can you still count yourself as having done something good if you drop a license plate off at the DOT and run like heck the other way, or do you need to follow a do-gooder’s protocol and take the extra steps to take it to the police station?

This might be a question for the NYtimes ethicist.

Either way, I’m kind of ticked off to have lost so much of my own time to doing the right thing. That police state protocol is right out of Kafka.