Boston Globe Fares Better with Taxi Butterfinger$

July 6, 2016

Very good (samaritan) story in today’s local dailies.

Start with the Boston Herald piece by Jordan Graham and O’Ryan Johnson.

Cops hail cabbie after turning in nearly $200G

Bundles of bills found in bag

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A Boston cabbie is being praised as a good Samaritan after finding and returning a passenger’s inheritance — nearly $200,000 in cold hard cash — accidentally left in the back of his taxi.

“Fifty percent of people say, ‘Yeah, you should have done that.’ The other 50 percent say, ‘You should have took it,’ but I’m not a crook,” said Raymond MacCausland, who found the green backpack filled with approximately $187,000 in cash in his cab on Saturday. “I always return things.”

 

Even the really big ones, apparently.

As for the absent-minded passenger, who told MacCausland he was homeless and moving into a motel, he wasn’t talking – at least to the Herald.

Reached by phone after the money was returned, the passenger declined to comment.

“I’m all set, I’m all set,” he said.

 

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, however, it was a slightly different story in Nestor Ramos’s hands.

[W]hile MacCausland was driving around Back Bay with a small fortune in a tattered backpack, the man to whom the money belonged wasn’t worried.

“I knew he’d find me,” the man said. “I didn’t panic at all.”

 

Beyond that, Ramos also generated this gem:

Standing outside his hotel on Tuesday, the heir said he was going to take a year to recover from many months of homelessness and decades of hard living. He checked into a hotel and was still getting used to not having to hide his meager things from overnight thieves.

After that, he wasn’t sure: He’d been trying to find an apartment, but his credit is disastrous. He says he has more inheritance money coming in the years ahead, but was unsure of the terms.

Eventually, he said, “I’m going to do what I always said I’m going to do: Die in Prague.”

 

Note to Mr. Butterfingers: If you need a taxicab in Prague, check here.


Boston Globe Goes Over the Wahlberg

December 6, 2014

It started with a report on NECN on Thursday, which both local dailies picked up for Friday’s editions.

Boston Globe Names:

 

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Boston Herald Inside Track:

Wahlberg asks for clean slate

Dorchester-born Holly-wood heartthrob Mark Wahlberg is asking the state to wipe his record clean of a 26-year-old assault rap Mark Wahlberg, Marky Markand other convictions, arguing that by “formally” forgiving his dark past, it could inspire troubled youths to turn their lives around.

The 43-year-old actor/producer/restaurateur served 45 days of a three-month sentence for an April 1988 crime he says he has spoken “openly and publicly about” during his rise to stardom.

With the request, filed Nov. 26, he’s asking the state to expunge it from his record, in part, so he could become “more active in law enforcement activities.”

 

Note: The Globe does not include the “reportedly left one of the victims blind in one eye” that the Herald does; the Herald does not include the racial slurs and the NECN credit that the Globe does.

Regardless, only one of them follows up on the story today.

 

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The report by Maria Cramer and Nestor Ramos starts with the 1988 racial incident, but also includes this:

In a separate episode, some from a class that was harassed in 1986 by a group of teens that included Wahlberg were not impressed with his request for a pardon.

Mary Belmonte, the class teacher, remembered leading her terrified elementary school students down a side street to avoid the hail of rocks. “I’m sure he’s sincere and he wants to clear his name,” Belmonte said. “It would be nice if he could apologize and really own up to what he was.’’

 

Huh.

Curiously, today’s Globe piece also says nothing about Lam losing his sight in one eye.

Double huh.

But the Globe website does include an archive of its coverage of the allegations from 1988-2000. Well worth a look.