Island daytripper finds honesty among the flowers

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Virginia Voilas of Trenton New Jersey arrived on Martha’s Vineyard for a day visit from Hyannis on a side trip during a weeklong bus tour of Cape Cod. While in Edgartown she and a girl friend enjoyed lunch at Among the Flowers Restaurant on Mayhew Lane.

The trip was pleasant and uneventful until she returned to Hyannis. The plain unmarked white envelope in which she had kept all her cash — $864 after paying her bill — was gone.

“Needless to say, I was devastated,” Ms. Voilas recounted in a telephone conversation from her New Jersey home. She called the restaurant and she called the police to ask if anyone had turned in the envelope. It had not been found.

Her tour guide said the money was gone and Ms. Voilas resigned herself to that fact. The next day the tour director called to say that Pat Toomey, owner along with his wife Polly of the restaurant, had the envelope. A waitress had found it and put it in a locker.

Ms. Voilas called the Toomeys to thank them. She asked the Toomeys to take $100 and give it to the person who found the envelope. The Toomeys declined, telling Ms. Voilas that they have wonderful people working for them and they would not think of taking a reward for doing the right thing.

Ms. Voilas had no way of retrieving the money so Ms. Toomey sent her a personal check in the full amount. She received it Saturday, she said.

“Isn’t that remarkable,” Ms. Voilas told The Times. “I just think this is such a great story for tourists to read. They [the restaurant] deserve some recognition.”