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December 20, 2004

A Found Wallet, Opening Wide

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

ppropriately enough for a holiday tale of New York, this one starts with a lost wallet in a taxicab – hundreds of dollars and a precious driver’s license speeding away into a river of yellow vehicles on Madison Avenue.

The story also includes a classic meeting under the clock tower in Grand Central Terminal, a swift connection between like-minded men and a promise to fulfill a pledge made in a passing moment.

That promise would yield a surprisingly generous gift for the city’s poor children and for an organization that has served them for 100 years.

It begins on Election Day, 2004, when John Scardino, a tan and manicured California real estate entrepreneur, was in town to personally finesse a deal for a property in Santa Barbara. Mr. Scardino, 46, not one to underplay his own accomplishments, describes himself as “the largest developer of planned communities on the central California coast.”

Rushing between meetings on that morning, Mr. Scardino made like a native, hailed a cab in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower and high-tailed it to an office tower at Madison Avenue and 45th Street. He remembers little of the trip except that his cabby was especially quiet and had black, curly hair. He never saw the man’s face, never noticed the name on the license.

Those failures would prove particularly vexing when, at his next appointment, he bellied up to the office tower’s security desk and had no identification. He realized that he had dropped his wallet in the cab and started running down the center of Madison Avenue, dodging traffic to furiously peek into cabs, but to no avail. With a flight to catch early the next morning and no ID to get past security, Mr. Scardino was frantic.

Fortunately for him, the next man who hailed his cab was a similarly flourishing businessman, Chuck Posternak, an executive at the investment firm Oppenheimer & Company, who noticed the wallet lying on the black seat cushion. He recognized from its rich contents that its owner would sorely miss it, and did what any upstanding businessman would do: He contacted his secretary to have her take care of the matter.

After half a dozen phone calls, including some to the West Coast, the two men had an appointment later that day to meet at the clock in Grand Central. Although generations have famously met there, the two men had trouble finding each other at first because each, an aggressor kept circling in search of the other.

But the meeting, when it happened, was joyful enough. To show his gratitude, Mr. Scardino begged Mr. Posternak, 63, to let him treat him to tickets to “Emeril Live,” the popular television cooking show where a friend of his worked.

Sure, Mr. Posternak answered, the tickets would be great, but what he really wanted was a small donation to a favorite charity: Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York, a group that provides intense one-on-one mentoring and social services to young people from poor and fatherless homes. “I beg for them every chance I get,” Mr. Posternak said cheerfully.

He then went into what he calls his three-minute spiel. A vice president of the group’s board of trustees, Mr. Posternak was a big brother himself for 40 years. When he was 22, he was paired with an 11-year-old named Lonnie Moss. Lonnie was one of five brothers living with a single mother in Crotona Park in the Bronx. When Mr. Posternak took him on an overnight trip to Massachusetts, Lonnie packed his clothing in a paper bag.

Although still making his way in his own career, Mr. Posternak took Lonnie bowling and to Knicks games. He got Lonnie a job at Dean Witter when he graduated from high school. Mr. Posternak continued to stay in touch, too, as his little brother went through various phases, including joining an ashram.

Mr. Posternak thinks his involvement made a difference because Lonnie eventually settled down, married, had three children and got a good job. The children attended college and, now 53 and driving a BMW, Mr. Moss recently became a big brother himself.”We talk as equals now, about our role as husbands and our pride in our kids,” Mr. Posternak said.

Although there was no way he could know it, Mr. Posternak’s solicitation fell on unusually receptive ears. Mr. Scardino confessed that he, too, was deeply committed to children’s groups.

His mother, he explained, died when he was 11 and his working father left Mr. Scardino largely on his own to navigate his community, Venice Beach, which was then infested with gangs. Mr. Scardino found a safe haven at the Boys Club of Santa Monica. At the well-equipped club, he played basketball with the children of Jerry West, then a star of the Los Angeles Lakers, and became a young table tennis champion.

After attending college and law school and developing his own business, Mr. Scardino became a major contributor to charities that serve children in Southern California, including the Boys and Girls Club in Thousand Oaks, where he makes his home, and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Luis Obispo.

At Grand Central he promised Mr. Posternak that he would make a gift, and then disappeared into the crush of commuters.

Despite the intense exchange of biographies, the meeting was less than 10 minutes, and Mr. Posternak never really expected to hear from Mr. Scardino again. After all, he had found and returned another wallet a week earlier and nothing had come of that. But then Mr. Posternak could not know that his new acquaintance was a giver with a flair for the dramatic.

Three and a half weeks later Mr. Scardino’s secretary called Mr. Posternak with an announcement. In mid-December her boss would be in New York to give away Christmas toys to poor children; in fact his plan was to buy $25,000 in toys at Toys “R” Us and pack them into a Hummer in an attempt to catch the eye of “Today” on NBC. Although the scheme never attracted the morning program’s cameras, the toys were given to another children’s charity, Boys and Girls Harbor. The plan had a point, he explains.

“This is the season to get people thinking, ‘Hey, if that guy can do it, so can I.’ “

But “Today” or not, Mr. Scardino’s secretary explained that while he was in New York he would like to present Big Brothers Big Sisters with a check for $10,000, which he did. And he promised to give another $10,000 a year for the next three years. Mr. Posternak said he almost dropped the phone.

He e-mailed Mr. Scardino immediately to thank him and to invite him to Big Brother Big Sister’s annual Christmas gala last Wednesday, during his stay in New York. But more than that, Mr. Posternak told his new friend, they must stay in touch.

“I don’t believe it is just accidental that two men who are so passionate about children’s causes meet because of a lost wallet,” Mr. Posternak said. “There is a miracle in here, even if it’s a small one.”

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