JACK STALLARD

I’m not sure if it was the mention of the jersey or the fact the man trusted the local newspaper to help him with his problem that turned the tide in his favor, but I spent a little bit of time Wednesday helping a man from Oregon retrieve some items he had left behind on a recent visit to East Texas.

Before you start thinking I’m patting myself on the back for doing a good deed, I’ll be up front with you.

My initial inclination was to do the bare minimum.

Wednesdays are crazy busy when it comes to my other job as sports editor at the Longview News-Journal.

On top of writing and editing stories for the next day’s edition of the newspaper, Wednesdays are also the day I put the finishing touches on content for the weekly four-page high school football preview section — The Zone — that publishes in the Longview, Tyler and Marshall newspapers.

I also type up a huge list of East Texas volleyball statistical leaders, and try to get a little ahead for the upcoming weekend.

All of this while trying to get out of the office at a decent hour on the only night of the week I can have dinner with my lovely wife and our Man Child.

So, when Mr. Scruggs called from Oregon at around 4 p.m. and told me his story, I was sympathetic and willing to find a local phone number for him. But, that was going to be the end of my participation in the problems of someone I will probably never meet.

Then, he hit me with a combination punch.

“I wasn’t sure who else to call, but I figured the local newspaper has the best connections,” Mr. Scruggs said.

That one got my attention.

I’ve worked at “local” newspapers in Kilgore, Lufkin and Longview for 39 years, and I’ve loved every minute of it.

The changes in the way we produce and deliver our product have been constant over the years, but why we do it — our readers — has never changed.

The knockout punch was the jersey.

Mr. Scruggs was in Longview for about four days, and stayed at a local hotel. When he got back home to Oregon he realized he had left some items in his hotel room.

“I tried calling, but couldn’t get a real person on the line,” he said. “I was just checking to see if you had a local directory handy or knew of some other way to get in touch with someone at the hotel?”

I didn’t want to shake his confidence in the local newspaper’s ability to get things done, but I was up to my eyeballs in volleyball and football statistics, so about the best I was going to be able to do was give him a number for the national hotel chain and hope they would get him in touch with someone local.

Then, he mentioned the jersey.

“I would like to get all of my things back, but what I really don’t want to lose is the jersey that has my grandson’s name and number on it. I wear it to all of his baseball games.”

I thought about a kid looking into the stands at his next baseball game and not seeing his grandfather wearing a jersey made to signify a special bond between them, and I realized I wasn’t actually all that busy.

An hour later, after driving across town and explaining the situation to a nice young lady at the hotel’s front desk, I was able to call Mr. Scruggs and inform him his stuff was safe and he would soon be contacted by Tiffany to arrange shipping details back to Oregon.

I’m glad Mr. Scruggs trusted the newspaper enough to give us a chance to help him with his problem.

I’m pleased someone found his stuff and did the right thing by turning it in, and I’m grateful Tiffany promised to get those items back where they belong.

Earlier this week, I got a call from a reader who said she was dropping her newspaper subscription and is probably leaving this area soon because she’s tired of reading about bad news all the time.

I hope she sees this and realizes what a great place East Texas is. I also hope she understands that good news doesn’t just magically happen.

There are no guarantees that every story will have a happy ending, but shame on us all if we don’t at least try.