It was a Saturday — a normal working day for Thiago Rodrigues dos Santos, 34, who works as an Uber driver. Among his trips, he took an elderly man to a mechanic’s shop in Praia Grande, in the southern coast of São Paulo (Brazil).
When he was about to pick up another passenger, he noticed that the man had forgotten a bag on the back seat of the car. Thiago didn’t think twice: he went back to the place where the old man had disembarked (the mechanic’s shop), but the place was already closed.
The driver then decided to try to find the passenger’s contact information inside the bag. When he opened it, Thiago found a surprise: a pile of money. “I was even more in a hurry to return it, because I could imagine this gentleman’s distress,” the driver told Uol.
Thiago decided to try the opposite approach and look for the man at the place where he had picked him up. And it worked! There the old man and his wife were in a desperate situation, because they thought they had lost the money: $4,000 Brazilian reais, the equivalent of nearly half an average monthly salary in Brazil.
Their dismay soon gave way to surprise, relief, and gratitude for the fact that the driver had come to return the money.
The cash, earned with much sacrifice, was already destined for a specific use: to pay for the repair of a vehicle that the couple uses to sell sugarcane juice at a street fair. Without it, their livelihood would be at risk.
The emotional moment
The video recorded by Rodrigues shows the emotional moment when he gave them the money. The woman doesn’t even know how to thank the young man’s act of honesty. “Mine and Our Lady of Aparecida!” she exclaims (a common expression of amazement in Brazil). “How good you are, my son! Continue like this, and you’ll have a happy life. I will put you in all my prayers,” said the elderly woman, who was visibly moved.
“The feeling of joy for doing good and putting into practice what my parents and the Church taught me has helped to cultivate non-negotiable values,” concluded Thiago.
Watch this touching moment. You don’t need to speak Portuguese to read the highly expressive body language of all those involved.
