A Times-Picayune Award Winning Story

After reading and commenting on the horrors of New Orleans, that ranges from murders to bribery, it is a good feeling to finally read an article that focuses on someone who has character and substance. The following article was refreshing:

Rhode Island eye doctor Thomas McCauley acknowledges that he came to a medical convention in New Orleans with his head on a swivel: wary, defensive and expecting calamity at any moment in a city he had been told was the crime capital of the country.

So when he lost four wads of crisp, newly won Ben Franklins totaling $8,000 at Harrah's New Orleans Casino on Thursday night, he figured his pocket had been picked, until Harrah's buffet waiter Al Castro handed the cash back to him an hour later, every hundred accounted for.

McCauley was still thunderstruck on Friday. He broadcast Castro's honesty to everyone he saw, beginning with Harrah's management, which eagerly grasped the incident as an opportunity not only to shower praise on one of its own, but also to counter New Orleans' image as a crime-ridden city that tourists enter at their peril.

"The man can't be tempted," an effusive McCauley said of Castro. "He's the saint of New Orleans."

McCauley, an eye surgeon from Narragansett, is in New Orleans attending a convention of the American Academy of Ophthalmology with a friend, Steve Carlson.

McCauley said he won $8,000 at craps and blackjack Thursday evening and stuffed the winnings in a spare wallet that carried no identification. He said he carries a second wallet as a defense against pickpockets, which he said friends back in Rhode Island warned him about.

Leaving the tables, McCauley said, he and Carlson spent an hour at the Harrah's buffet. Castro, 34, who also is an accounting student at the University of Phoenix, waited on them with such amiability that McCauley filled out a complimentary remarks card for Harrah's management. Then he and Carlson left to catch a show elsewhere in the casino.

An hour later, McCauley said, he realized his spare wallet -- stuffed with money but no identification -- was gone.

"I thought I got picked for sure -- that somebody had set me up," he said.

The waiter said Friday that he found the wallet stuck in the booth McCauley and Carlson had vacated.

When they rushed back to the restaurant an hour or so later, Castro recognized McCauley and readily returned the wallet, McCauley said.

"He said, 'Don't worry; it's all there,' " McCauley recalled.

McCauley quickly determined Castro was right. He insisted on rewarding Castro, who has a wife and 1-year-old daughter. But Castro refused to take anything, he said.

Even so, McCauley spent much of Friday making sure Harrah's, his convention colleagues and a good many others knew of Castro's honesty. "The day he graduates I'd hire him to do my books," he said.

As the story spread, Harrah's General Manager Jim Hoskins relayed word all the way up the corporate chain to Harrah's headquarters in Las Vegas.

"Don't worry, we're going to take care of him," Hoskins said.

So finally, the question: Why return a cash-stuffed wallet with no ID?

"Well, Dr. McCauley was a gentleman, and I put myself in his shoes," Castro said. "Plus my wife's been telling me she believes in karma.

"Good things happen to people to who do good things."