WHAT WORKED

Lost and Found: Astra Valters takes AC Transit from San Francisco to her library job in the East Bay, but one day earlier this month, she made a colossal mistake: She left her purse on the vehicle. It was 8:20 a.m. when Valters realized her miscue and telephoned AC Transit's Lost and Found department. What happened next made ChronicleWatch take notice: Not knowing that Valters had called, the driver of Valters' bus, Sarah Carroll, phoned her at work to say she'd found the purse. (Carroll got Valters' number from the bag.) In the meantime, an AC Transit dispatcher, Pierre Antoine, arranged to get Valters' purse from a Richmond bus yard. Over the next two hours, Carroll and Antoine stayed in touch with the librarian. By midmorning, Antoine personally delivered the purse to Valters' East Bay office. "He did this after he got off shift," Valters e-mailed ChronicleWatch. "He was here, purse intact and in a sealed envelope, by 10:20 am. There was a checklist of items in my purse, and everything was accounted for. ... They turned a really miserable mistake on my part into the best thing that has happened to me this week." A steady stream of public-works problems are brought to the attention of ChronicleWatch, so when Valters contacted us to praise the East Bay bus service, we agreed this was a moment that deserved attention - especially because Carroll and Antoine were motivated by nothing more than good will. "I was just doing my job," Carroll told us when we caught up with her in front of her bus at the Transit Terminal. Only after a few requests did Carroll reluctantly agree to have her photo taken. Her smile told a side of a story that often gets lost in the daily commutes around the Bay Area.

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