Rico's Restitution

Beerbohm's The RestitutionIt must have happened almost exactly 20 years ago. I was teaching 8-, 9- and 10-year olds in a multigrade classroom in a small Christian school of 320 students in southern California.

Each day at 11:45 I'd have the students stack their work neatly on their desktops and walk down the sidewalk to the lunch tables under the awning behind the kindergarten room. The students who had ordered a hot lunch could make their way to the lunch tables via Mrs. Yapshing's lunch window, which faced in on the parking lot. After supervising lunch, Mrs. Rice would let the students go out on the playground for recess before we teachers called them back in.

I was teaching one afternoon when Mrs. Yapshing passed by my classroom windows and knocked on the door. I went to meet her.

"Do you know if Rico's parents sent extra lunch money with him?" she asked.

"No," I said, somewhat startled. I took the lunch orders along with taking attendance in the morning, and didn't ask to see the students' lunch money.

"Well, Rico came to the window with twenty dollars today," she said. "A twenty dollar bill. And he bought lunch for himself and two friends. It 's not usual for him to have that much money."

"I don't know," I said. Honestly, I didn't pay attention to the money my students brought or didn't bring with them. I had no idea what was typical.

"Well, I think you should mention it to his parents," said Mrs. Yapshing.

So after school, as Rico was being picked up, I mentioned to his stepdad out of Rico's hearing that Mrs. Yapshing noticed that he had come to the lunch window with twenty dollars.

Rico's stepdad frowned. "I'll look into it," was all he said.

The next day Rico's stepdad brought a very glum 10-year old to the classroom at the start of the day. In front of Rico, he told me that his boy had confessed to taking the money out of my purse. My purse! I usually stashed it under my desk and hadn't even noticed that one of my two twenties was gone.

"Rico will be working it off," his stepdad said. "Would you be willing to wait for him to pay you back until the money is earned?"

I said "Sure." I was feeling squirmy in the stern presence of Rico's stepdad. I recognized that consequences were appropriate, but I was also a bit worried that Rico might catch some physical consequences for his deed, and was also worried about how harsh that might be, coming from a man that stern.

Some weeks later, Rico's dad again came to the classroom with his stepson. Rico approached me and handed me four twenty dollar bills.

"Wait," I protested. "Rico only owes me twenty dollars."

"No," said Rico's stepdad. "I read him the Bible story about Zacchaeus the tax collector. When he confessed to Jesus that he had stolen money from the people, he promised to pay back what he had stolen, times four. If Rico is going to learn his lesson about stealing, he needs to follow the good example of Zacchaeus."

"But I don't feel right taking extra money," I said.

"You can do what you want with it," said Rico's stepdad. Rico was standing by quietly, looking uncomfortable and distressed. "Rico has worked fair and square with me in my roofing business to earn the money to pay for what he took, and to learn to be honest. He's spent some pretty hot days in the sun. I don't think he'll be stealing again." Rico shook his head, agreeing with his dad that the temptation to steal would no longer be a temptation.

I found a way to give Rico a hug around the shoulders that morning so he'd know I held no grudges and was sympathetic to his hard work. And that weekend I put the extra $60 dollars in the offering at church, designating it on the envelope for the worthy student fund for Christian education. It needed to go for a good cause.

I thought of Rico for the first time in years and years as I read about restitution in Exodus 22:1 the other day: "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep." And I wondered what had happened to Rico.

I looked for him on Facebook, that ever-widening circle of networks. And I found someone with his name and a grownup version of his face, living in Texas. Same twinkly eyes, same mischievous smile. If it's not him, this guy sure bears the similarities. I sent the Facebook guy a message asking if he'd been my student, telling him I'd suddenly thought of him that day and wondered how he was doing.

He hasn't responded.