My son Colin sold his car Toyota Yaris last week. When I helped him to hand over the car to the purchaser, there was one problem. My son had only one car key. He had misplaced the spare key. The purchaser wanted the spare key, and that was a fair request. So I offered to let the purchaser reduce the car price by the value of a replacement key. I thought the key would not have cost more than $100.
And then I found out the replacement key would cost $430. It cost that much because the key contains electronic code to start the ignition, and only Toyota knows the electronic code and can replace the key.
Suddenly I felt a tinge of pain, at the loss of $430.
The buyer gracefully agreed to give us a reasonable couple of weeks to see if we could find the key in the house, before collecting the $430 replacement cost from us.
For a few days, I searched through every corner, drawers, boxes and bags. No, there was no sign of the key. I was resigned to the loss of $430.
My wife joined in the search effort today. She started by saying a prayer to St Anthony. Her mother had told her before that St Anthony is frequently invoked by people who need help looking for something lost.
As she began searching, my wife constantly prayed for St Anthony's assistance. She only focused on the boxes and drawers in the study. She picked through every folders, files, drawers that I had searched hard before.
About an hour later, my wife laid her hands on a standing cut-off filing box in which we kept new envelopes. The envelopes were neatly packed and tightly held in the box, without loose spaces in between for hiding anything much less than the bulk of a car key. My wife decided to turn out all the envelopes anyway. There, at the bottom of the box was a plastic wallet marked Melville Toyota, the name of the dealer from where my son bought his Toyota. A gush of joy and hope overwhelmed her and with slightly trembling hands she removed the wallet, opened it, and found two new spare keys still kept in the sleeves inside the wallet.
The wallet had undoubtedly laid in that box for a long four years, unseen and untouched since the day the car was bought. Somehow it slid from a standing position and laid at the bottom of the box as we piled other stuffs over it.
My wife thanked St Anthony profusely.
St Anthony, the Saint you need when you are looking for lost stuff.
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