Ticket To Ride

At the age of eighteen, I lost a $10.00 bill on an Ocean City, New Jersey beach. All it means is that one snotty nosed kid treated himself to ice cream and free arcade games but I still haven't forgiven my carelessness. That was my ice cream and pinball games. With that being said, I know little about horse racing but I know a thing about irony to write this story. There is a governing rule of thumb in the horse racing industry that in order to make a small fortune start out with a large fortune. This isn't the case here.

Horse racing's golden event, the 2005 Kentucky Derby, enjoyed an unlikely finish. The break the bank payoff came after 50-1 long shot Giacomo raced to the second-biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history. Giacomo beat a 72-1 long shot named Closing Argument and local hero Afleet Alex, finished a disappointing third. Don't Get Mad finished fourth at 30-1. What does all this mean? Chris Hertzog, 39, of Phoenix Arizona, was one of only seven people in the country who picked the four horses in the order they finished. That is as good as it gets because the winning superfecta ticket paid out a resounding $864,253.50. Although he bucked astronomical odds, Herzog had one major problem. He lost the ticket to the horse race and it became a tail of whoa. Can anyone say cold sweat, hyperventilation, and life altering depression? It was a nightmare and I don't mean the breed of horse. He frantically retraced his steps at Turf Paradise in Louisville, Kentucky, an extensive search that did not spare trash cans and dumpsters. He called off the search after hours of painstaking looking. I doubt he saw much sleep that night.

The next day, a brutally honest mutual clerk named Brenda Reagan noticed the lost ticket lying next to her machine. She stepped forward after she realized she sold it but never gave him the paper ticket. The misplaced slip of paper was still sitting next to the machine where Hertzog had placed the wager the previous day. A slip up if you will for Freudian Slips. To my knowledge, the media never reported if a reward was given to the mutual clerk although it is hard to imagine otherwise. After all, this story cannot be told without properly honoring the mutual clerk. A lesser woman would have been, shall we say, off to the races! I started to think how much of a finder's fee I would have bestowed upon the mutual clerk if my exhilarating bear hugs didn't kill her first. I am throwing this one out to the readers. How much reward is due the mutual clerk? What is fair? What is just? If it were me, I would like to think I would reward her honesty in the amount of 25% or $156,00 after taxes. Then again, I have been called a miser who still owns his first penny. You make the call.