Underwater Synchro

John Krayeski, pictured above at right, speared a synchro in 90 feet of water off Palm Beach, Florida on Mother’s Day. John was diving on an artificial reef made of a sunken freighter and Rolls Royce (well, it is Palm Beach) when he noticed something sticking up out of the sand.

“I pull it out and it’s a JC Penny credit card,” Krayeski told a Palm Beach Post reporter. “I knew it was an old one because of the design. When he climbed back aboard his boat, he took a closer look and recognized the name of the card holder. It was a man he’d recently worked for in his job as a contractor.

“I said to my friend, ‘We did an addition to this guy’s house.” At his office, he compared signatures on the card with a contract in his files. They looked very much alike, so he called Jack Jacobs. His wife answered and said they didn’t have any J.C. Penny credit cards. But ten minutes later, Jacobs called back and said  he’d lost that card 25 years ago before he was married.

“The befuddling thing is, how did it get a mile offshore on some reef?” Jacobs wonders. And what are the chances that a friend would find his lost card in the vast ocean a quarter of a century later?

“I told John I’m going to drop another card in the ocean and he has 25 years to find it.”

***

This story reminds me of how a man fishing with a net caught my wallet a week after I lost it while windsurfing. He returned it with all the cards and cash. Amazingly, I’d met the man a week before losing the wallet when he came to our house soliciting business for his landscaping company. Here’s that story.