O'FALLON, Mo. — Highway K in O'Fallon, Missouri became the perfect place for a random act of kindness on Sunday.
Jean Wolf, a 74-year-old retired para teacher, spent her Sunday afternoon preparing things for her mother's celebration of life, a Catholic funeral mass, and the inevitable grief of losing a loved one. Her 98-year-old mother is dying and was recently placed in hospice.
"I was so proud," she said about what she had accomplished in just a few hours.
Then Wolf went outside, spoke with a neighbor, and put her phone and the folder, with all her mother's funeral details, on the trunk of her car.
"I was in a hurry to get to my mom's, I forgot it was on the car," Wolf admitted.
She didn't realize that the phone and the folder with those important papers flew all over Highway K as she drove off.
"I was at my mom's a couple of hours and Natasha called and said, 'Mom, you don't have your phone?' I said I have my phone. What do you mean?" Wolf said to her daughter on the phone.
Wolf wanted to be prepared for the funeral but this moment created panic as she realized that all of her hard work had suddenly vanished.
"I did not care about my phone at all. I cared about all these readings I had and I didn't have the papers anymore," Wolf said. "So I thought where do I start now? ... I just was so upset and, the man his name is Arnie, and he called me and he said I found your papers and your phone."
The stranger
The time was 1:30 p.m. when Arnie Dienoff was heading to an estate sale in St. Charles when his plans were derailed. He pulled his car into a bank lot on Highway K near Hutchings Farm Drive and ran across the busy road, in between the double solid yellow lines to grab what he thought was a notebook flapping in the wind.
As Dienoff looked through the papers to find clues about the owner he said "There was actually in there an obituary and I'm like, oh my gosh, somebody just unfortunately passed away and they're probably needing this to make arrangements.'
He ran back into the street when he realized there was something else on the road: a phone.
The phone was locked but when the phone rang Dienoff let Wolf's daughter know that he had the phone.
Wolf's daughter shared that she has been going through a hard time because her mother is passing. Deinoff responded empathetically.
"Oh my gosh, and my heart just dropped and said you know, that's just really sad," he recalled.
When Wolf learned of his kindness she couldn't hold back the tears. She was grateful that Dienoff stopped and took the time to return her things. As she rummaged through the papers, Dienoff learned that the most important paper of them all was still missing. Dienoff went back out to find more papers–some of which were in ditches.
"I was just totally impressed that he found the paper. The one paper I wanted most of all is the one he got," Wolf said.
By the time Dienoff was done searching for those papers, the sun was no longer in the sky.
"He kept going up and down the street and he found pretty many of them that I didn't need. The only thing I needed was what I wrote down because I was finished and he found that paper. So I don't know if that's important, but it is to me because I feel like my mom's dying and my dad, he got Arnie to help me do what I needed to do. My mom's coming home to heaven very soon," she added.
Wolf's father died in 1995 after a 47-year marriage to her mother.
Wolf tried to give Dienoff money to repay him for his generosity but he refused. She repaid him with brownies instead.
"I just want to release the stress and, and do whatever I can to make sure that their mom has a good rest of their life and enjoys every day that's left and they have some tough decisions ahead and I, just, my heart goes out to them," he said.
Overcome with joy Wolf said, "That's my dad working little miracles up in heaven."
Wolf's phone barely had a scratch on it and endured the relentless traffic of Highway K.
"It was a miracle," she thought.
"I'm pretty sure according to her that I retrieved all her papers. So I just wanted to make sure that she was whole, because I know how things can happen sometimes," Dienoff said.
Wolf said she remembers him saying "'I just want you to know there are still good people in the world.' He said, just always remember that. I said I will never forget."
She said he spoke to Dienoff, a stranger, for hours enamored by his generosity at such a difficult time for her family.
"If it looks like something valuable, I'm gonna stop and try to find the owner," he said.
Wolf's daughter Natasha has given Dienoff a new nickname: 'Arnie the Angel.'
