WESTBROOK — Eileen Watters just couldn’t let it go.
Six weeks ago Watters, 93, realized her favorite cane was missing. It was rainbow colored and had her name and address on it.
“She loved that cane so much,” says her son, Gary, “that she wouldn’t bring it to Disney (last year) because she didn’t want to lose it.”
The last time Watters remembers having the cane was May 1. She had just left Len Libby’s in Scarborough after picking up her monthly order of four packages of caramels.
“I bought the candy, and from there I went to the Christmas Tree Shop,” she says. “And when I got out of my car my cane wasn’t there.”
She called the candy shop as soon as she got home, but no one had turned in a cane. It wasn’t in the lost-and-found at the Christmas Tree Shop either.
Watters’ son says it wasn’t just the loss of the cane that bothered his mother.
“If she found a cane with somebody’s name on it,” he says, “she’d do all she could to return it to them.”
Watters couldn’t let the matter rest. On June 5, she wrote a letter to the Portland Press Herald. It was short and to the point: “To the person who took my cane from Len Libby’s candy store on Route 1 in Scarborough around 1:15 p.m. on May 1: Because I don’t have the cane, I may fall and spend two or three months in rehabilitation because of broken bones. My name is on the cane.”
The newspaper published the letter Wednesday. When Len Libby’s owner, Maureen Hemond, heard about Watters’ plight Wednesday morning, she and her staff searched every nook and cranny of the shop. The cane was nowhere.
“So we decided in that case, ‘Let’s come to the rescue,’ ” says Hemond, whose family has owned the business since 1949.
Hemond has offered to buy Watters a new cane – and to send her some of her favorite candies.
“We’re thrilled to do this,” she says. “How often does an opportunity like this come along that you can do something for someone? It does our hearts good.”
The mystery of what happened to Eileen Watters’s rainbow cane may never be solved. But her faith in people? That’s been restored.
“I feel a little bit embarrassed because I don’t really want them to do it, but otherwise it’s a good feeling to know they want to do that,” she says with a smile. “There are nice people in this world.”
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