Praise for what these two didn't do

Not often does a person deserve a pat on the back for something he didn't do, but a couple of recent instances are worth pointing out because they say a lot about the kind of choices we face - some of us every day, some of us perhaps once in a lifetime.

The first occurred a couple of weeks ago when Carson City grocery store clerk Luke Schober, 18, came across a bagful of money in a shopping cart - $5,000 in cash and some $83,000 more in checks and money orders.

What Luke didn't do, of course, was keep it. What he did do was rather matter-of-factly turn it over to the store manager, saving the owner of the bank bag one gigantic headache.

Now, we'd all like to think we would have acted just like Luke. But a bagful of money isn't exactly the kind of thing we run across every day - or ever, for most of us.

So anyone reading that article in the Nevada Appeal surely spent a few moments ruminating about just how we would have reacted. And under what circumstances we might just have been tempted ...

But no. The fact that there aren't many bank bags lying around doesn't mean there aren't opportunities every day simply to do the right thing. The Golden Rule hasn't gone out of style.

The second instance came up Thursday night for Carson City Deputy Brian Morton, and it's one all of us hope we never have to face.

After responding to a call about 9:30 p.m. in which someone was reported to have a weapon, Morton stopped an Oldsmobile at the top of Lakeview Hill. As he got out of his patrol car, he heard a shotgun blast.

What Morton didn't do was return fire. He easily could have, and the circumstances show he would have been justified.

What he did do, though, was arrest a couple of teenagers armed with a shotgun. Their story was they were trying to remove a shell from the chamber when the gun discharged through the floorboards.

Morton made a split-second decision, which turned out to be the right one. He credited his training, something few of us would have. That's why we rely on Carson City sheriff's deputies to be out there protecting the rest of the community.

Their job, sad to say, is protecting us from people who haven't figured out how not to do the wrong thing.