Mystery of lost keys solved

To recap: Last Monday, a week ago, I drove home from work, as usual. My wife and I commute together (since we both work for the same company), and these days we usually take her car just to help keep the mileages about the same between our two cars.

To keep this from becoming a long story, once at home in the garage, I had my hands full getting out of the car, so I put my sunglasses, parking transponder, and apparently the car keys on the roof of the car so I could get my backpack off the back seat.

Next morning she can't find her keys, me having left before her because I had an early meeting and she didn't have to be at work until 10:30 AM. So she uses her spare key and off she goes to work. Obviously she didn't see her primary set of keys on the car roof. She's short.

So, here it is 10 days later, and what do we get in the mail? Her car keys. Banged up; one key bent. And a letter from Kroger (large grocery store chain in the eastern US) telling us their customer care center identified us from the "Kroger Plus Card" key tag she always kept on her keys. Truthfully, she has about 10 key tags for various places. Anyway, Kroger found us in their database and mailed the keys back to us.

At first I had no idea how the keys could have been left at Kroger. But the scratches, etc., said that somehow they must have been knocked around. Obviously some good Samaritan found the keys on the road somewhere (after they slid off the car roof) and seeing the Kroger tag turned them in to Kroger. Kroger went the extra mile (so to speak--that's about how far away the local store is from us) and returned the car keys to us.

Kroger deserves kudos for obviously seeing an opportunity for good customer service and acting on it. The anonymous person who found the keys also deserves a mention, since today most people would simply chuckle and keep going.

Say whatever you want about Kroger, it does appear they are trying. And in this case, succeeding. Thanks.