Instant Karma

Okay, so I'm still really sick. But I went to the Oakland Zoo this Saturday with Rally Comm which was a lot of fun. Obviously it wasn't nearly as kick-ass as our zoo, but it was still a lot of fun regardless. Especially since all of the animals were acting really inappropriately, which was absolutely hilarious...

On Sunday I volunteered with Rally Comm for the Campaign for Berkeley event, which was basically a fundraiser. They were trying to raise 1.5 billion dollars for the school, so it was a really big deal. The people who attended this event could easily write you a check for 2 million dollars and not even miss a beat. Harrison Ford even attended one year. These are the people our buildings are named after, so you can understand why I volunteered for the event, and why I was willing to go all the way into Emeryville to buy a pair of pants for the night.

Basically, it was our job to make these people feel really welcome from the moment they stepped out of their cars, where we greeted them with a March to Victory filled with smiles and cheering. Later on we led them in cheers while the band played and the Chancellor kicked a football held up by our star quarterback, Kevin Riley. The victory cannon was fired, Oski was there, and the library was decorated to look like a 5-star hotel. So, after all our hard work we were allowed to mingle with the donors/alumni while enjoying drinks, desserts, and live music. So I was enjoying the multitude of delicious desserts, when this lady walks up to me and asks me if I want to drive a golf cart to pick up the valets and bring them back to the parking structure where they parked the cars. Excited for the opportunity to get behind the wheel again, I enthusiastically agreed.

Three hours later and the rush of people leaving the party started to wind down, and I was relieved of my duty. As I was exciting the golf cart, I looked behind me and realized that some elderly lady whom I had given a ride to had left her purse in the cart. As I picked it up and started walking toward the security table, I realized that my wallet was gone from my back pocket. With tears in my eyes, I returned the purse and started searching desperately for my wallet. I had been so many different places that night it seemed impossible that I would ever find it. I was devastated, because credit cards aside, the contents of the wallet would have cost me over $100 to replace: not a fun situation for a college student to be in. Well, I told the woman who had asked me to help drive that I had lost my wallet, and about 5 minutes later I was talking to the Sergeant of the Berkeley Police Department and had around 10 other people helping me look for my wallet. Still, it seemed hopeless because the most likely spot that I had lost my wallet was somewhere along the path that I had been driving the cart.

Desperate to check every possible location, I hopped back in one of the golf carts with another lady who was helping me, and started backtracking my way down the various paths I had driven. I was searching for a tiny black wallet on black asphalt at 11:00 at night. But the lady I was with assured me that we would find it: karma would play its part. I told her if I hadn't built up enough karma during the past 3 hrs while voluntarily driving in the freezing cold with the flu, and returning the purse of a millionaire, I wouldn't ever have enough.

After driving down the route that I had taken for most of the night, I decided to check the original path that I had taken. I had only driven this way twice, because it required me to make an illegal U-turn, and the golf cart had no turn signals, no horn, and no headlights, and that had been over 2 hours ago. Plus, I had already gotten yelled at once by a security cop at the event, and I didn't want to push my luck. As we rounded the corner and I got ready to make one last U-turn, there it was sitting in the middle of the street, untouched. I couldn't believe it. I had always been a believer of Karma, but if I had had any doubts before, they were gone now.

Needless to say, it was a great way to end the night. We got pulled over by a cop who heard us yelling in disbelief, but he let us go after we told him the story. But not before telling me not to drive without headlights... I parked the golf cart and was handed a hardcover book that the guests had received as a parting gift as a reward for my hard work, and the valet company even offered me a job as a driver.

So to those of you who doubted me when I told you I have instantaneous Karma... HAZAAH!