Although he didn’t speak English very well, he managed to tell me that he worked from 3 a.m. to noon delivering propane to coffee carts from Midtown to the financial district and that he hadn’t been able to call me until he got home to Queens. He apologized for opening my wallet to find my business card.

He told me he would leave the wallet at a coffee cart on 50th Street and Sixth Avenue, where I would be able to pick it up the next day any time after 3 a.m. I asked him to put it in a bag, so that it wasn’t obvious it was a wallet.

Despite everything I said, he wouldn’t let me send him anything to thank him. I asked his name several times, and he told me several times, but I couldn’t understand him. When I asked him to spell it, that didn’t work either. After we hung up, I received a simple text: just his first name.

At 5:45 a.m. the next day I got a text with a photo of the cart where he had left the wallet (there were two carts on the block, and he didn’t want me to be confused). When I got there, my wallet was in a plastic bag, and inside the bag was a silver gift bag and a card with my name and his.

Before I could call him, he called me to ask if I had picked up my wallet. Again, he refused to agree to let me do anything for him. He said he was happy I had gotten my wallet back. That was more than enough for him.

— Alice Martell