‘Restores my faith in humanity’: Calgary Transit employees reunite woman with lost purse

A woman who left her expensive purse on a CTrain last week has been reunited with the bag, thanks to Calgary Transit employees.

On her way to work, Robyn Hammer lost her Kate Spade purse with about $150 in cash, event tickets, a new iPod and cards inside.

“My heart sank,” Hammer said Tuesday at the 4 Street S.W. station.

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CTrain driver Murray McGill was handed a purse from a passenger who explained that someone left it on the train.

“It was incredible of her to have done something like that without any thought in it, I’m sure,” he said.

McGill saw all the cash and valuables in the bag and said he called control immediately.

“Because of the large amount of money, they wanted me to hand it off to somebody as soon as possible, which I did,” he said.

There was no address in the purse but there was a name, so sleuth transit supervisor Tracey Ferraton went to work, searching online to find clues.

“Through LinkedIn, actually, I was able to contact the owner’s company,” he said.

Ferraton made the call to Hammer.

“I could tell that she was very upset, obviously, having lost her purse with money and valuables and everything else inside, but obviously very relieved once I informed her that I had the purse and everything appeared to be intact,” he said.

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Hammer said she cried when she heard the incredible news.

“This completely restores my faith in humanity. I feel like there’s a lot of negativity in the world right now and this just meant so much to me that these people cared enough to get ahold of me right away, track me down however they could,” she said.

“I had the purse back in my hands three hours later.”

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Happens on occasion

The transit employees said incidents like this occur on occasion, a couple of times a year.

“It’s not that often that someone will hand in something like that, that’s been found on a train,” McGill said.

“It’s not often that we find a lot of money inside a purse,” Ferraton added. “Usually, it’s going to be gone. But in this case, we were able to get it back to her, which was really nice. Felt good to be able to do that.”