As he jumped online at the airport to cancel his passport, a New Zealand call came through to his cellphone.
It was an Air New Zealand staff member with news that a Virginia man had found the passport. “I was like, ‘Oh, God, I love you.’”
Jamie Wall on an earlier visit to Washington DC during his US trip. Photo / supplied
But that was to be only the start of Wall’s good news break and an extraordinary 24 hours that followed.
His passport saviour, Park Wollam, is a retired army veteran and State Department worker – and, as it turns out, a handy and patient part-time detective and a hell of a kind person.
Wollam had found the passport that had slipped out of Wall’s shorts on the Silver Line Metro train and figured out from it, and the boarding pass, how to find its owner – spending an hour on hold with Air New Zealand for starters.
“I can’t think of a better person to find your lost passport than this guy because he’d literally spent a career issuing them and visas and stuff,” Wall told Media Insider.
“The family pieced my life together from it.”
Wollam offered to bring the passport to Dulles Airport, an hour and 15 minutes away by train from his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
But Wall – who works at MediaWorks as producer/co-host of Martin Devlin’s DSPN podcast – had already cancelled his flights and was no longer in a hurry. “I said, ‘No, please, you’ve already done enough.’”
Laden with his luggage after six weeks covering the All Blacks through South Africa and the US, Wall made his way to Alexandria by train, and traipsed his way to Wollam’s front door.
“I pulled up to the house, he opened the door, and he’s like, ‘Oh, you’ve walked all this way with all your gear. You’ve got to have a drink.’
“He goes, ‘Do you like football?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ ‘Oh, come on, come on – we’re all watching the football.’
“All of a sudden I’m sitting on the couch with a beer, and watching the Washington Commanders play the Philadelphia Eagles.
“We just start talking, and they’re all super friendly people. It was him, his wife, his two daughters and daughter’s partner.”
Wall got up to leave at halftime; the Wollams were having none of it. He stayed for the second half – and the night.
Jamie Wall enjoyed the hospitality of a perfect stranger, Park Wollam, in Alexandria, Virginia.
The next morning, Wollam gave Wall a personal tour of Alexandria. Among the highlights was the high school that was home of the 1971 football team that inspired the film Remember the Titans.
Wollam also showed Wall a roomful of memorabilia in his home, including antique weapons and an image of his father with Raul Castro. Park Wollam snr was an American diplomat who served as the US Consul in Santiago de Cuba during the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s.
“I was just like, man, this is fascinating. I’m not even going to bother going to a museum. I’m in one.”
Jamie Wall with an antique weapon from the Vietnam War.
For Wall, it was ironic that, after six weeks travelling through South Africa and the US, trouble came on the very last scheduled day.
But the experience has confirmed his faith in humanity.
“I have faith in humanity, so I wouldn’t say it restored it, but it certainly made me feel pretty good about people and their kindness.
“I remember saying to him, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this, this is so, so nice, you’ve been so kind.’
“And he just looked at me, ‘Well, I found it. I had to help you.’ He wasn’t like boasting. ‘I had to do it.’
“It made me feel like there are just good people out there. With America, people have mixed views on the country right now, but it’s the people that make the place. That’s what I’ll think about it.”
Wall returned to Dulles Airport that following afternoon, on the train. “I was clutching my passport in my hands the entire time.”
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Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME, including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor, and has a small shareholding in NZME.