Now that newspapers have websites and social media accounts, reporting happens on a different timetable than in the print-only years. Our work phones are essential for interviews, emailing and texting co-workers, seeing press releases quickly no matter where we are, taking pictures, taking and making videos, and even publishing online right at a scene or a meeting where a big announcement has been made or vote taken.

If you follow us on Facebook, check wiscassetnewspaper.com a lot or, for the bigger breaking news, subscribe to our free emails, you can see it soon, usually very soon, thanks to the mobility our phones provide.

So when I lost mine Saturday at Walmart, I was sickened at not being reachable for work and at the incovenience I would be setting in motion for myself and others if I didn't find it.

I retraced my steps. A shopper in the shoes section saw I was looking like I'd lost something. I told her and she offered to ring the phone. No luck hearing it, but I appreciated the help. I looked everywhere else I'd been in the store, including checkout.

I thought maybe I had left the phone in the car. Out to the lot I went. I didn't see it on the seat or anywhere else, including between the seats where things often turn up and require extrication. A couple parked in the next spot was returning to their car. I said I was so sorry to bother them but was there any way they could ring my phone.

The man smiled.

"We found your phone."

"Oh my God. A black case," I asked, in case the phone they found was someone else's. A big box store on a Saturday can have about a city of people.

Yes, they said, both smiling and saying they were so happy they had found it for me. It was among the brushes I had looked at in the pharmacy section.

The couple were from New Hampshire, he a retired professor. They had a veteran's plate. I asked, he said he had served, and I thanked him for his service.

I think we were all a bit struck as was the pharmacy employee who gave me the phone, that a couple shopping in the vast, busy store found the phone lost by the stranger parked next to them; plus the timing of our returning to our cars at the same time.

What were the odds?

The employee called it fate.

Asking at checkout earlier hadn't yielded my phone but I would have eventually asked at the right place in the store and thanks to the couple turning it in, would have been reunited with it. But it worked out ideally because I got to thank them.

I thanked them one more time after I got it back. I texted them on it.

Dennis wrote back, "We're more happy for you knowing your phone has gone home. Jean & I are deliriously happy for you."

Jean and Dennis are two of those people who restore your faith in humanity. All it takes is being thoughtful, a good reminder for us all.