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Oregon woman thankful for Safeway employee’s actions

An Oregon woman is singing the praises of Dee Dee Sigsworth from Williams Lake.

An Oregon woman is singing the praises of Dee Dee Sigsworth from Williams Lake.

“I left my purse in the Safeway Starbucks area on July 20,” Holly Drake told the Tribune by phone from her Ashland home Wednesday. “We were two hours out of town when we got a phone call from Dee Dee who works at Safeway.”

Sigsworth had tracked them down by going through Holly’s purse and finding her passport with her husband’s phone number in it.

The purse also contained credit cards, a cell phone, cash and ID.

Drake said she would have been totally lost if Sigsworth hadn’t located her.

Drake and her husband were heading north to Babine Lake to visit friends so when Sigsworth called them they turned around and drove back to Williams Lake to pick up the purse.

When Drake spoke with the Safeway manager and he retrieved her purse, she insisted on meeting Sigsworth.

“He took me upstairs into the office where she was sitting at a desk and I got to hug her,” Drake said.

Turning around did add four hours to their trip so by the time they got to Smithers they were pretty exhausted.

“It was very quiet in the car after we headed out for the second time from Williams Lake,” chuckled Drake.

While in Williams Lake, the couple stayed at the Lakeside Motel, which Drake described as “adorable.”

“We’ve gone up to Babine Lake three times now, but it was the first time we stopped and stayed in Williams Lake. We had a cute little room that we could see the lake from.”

Drake is a retired ICU nurse and her husband is retired airline pilot.

Ashland is 10 miles north of the California border in the middle of Oregon and is a little mountain town and tourist attraction, she said.

“We have the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and are at the height of tourist season now.”

The Drakes have lived in Oregon for 13 years. Before that they lived in Alaska for 11 years, but both grew up in Southern California.



Monica Lamb-Yorski

About the Author: Monica Lamb-Yorski

A B.C. gal, I was born in Alert Bay, raised in Nelson, graduated from the University of Winnipeg, and wrote my first-ever article for the Prince Rupert Daily News.
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