A Bronx family who left bags of gifts in a livery car got a Christmas Day gift when the cabby returned all of their wrapped presents.
“There are still good people out there,” a grateful Matilda Garcia told The Post after fearing she might never see the presents meant for her family.
Thanks to two good-hearted livery drivers and their dispatcher, the grandmother was reunited with the gifts in time to give them to her family.
The episode started when Garcia, 57, and her daughter were sharing a cab home last Tuesday. Garcia’s daughter made the first stop and was supposed to collect all the goodies from the trunk.
But they got their signals crossed, and Garcia’s daughter grabbed only one bag — leaving the rest in the cab as it drove away.
Later that evening, the family realized what had happened — the gifts, totaling $500, were gone.
“It was a little devastating,” Garcia said. “My mom is 82. I don’t know if this will be her last [Christmas].”
The family was so heartbroken they didn’t immediately call the dispatcher. “I had already accepted the loss,” said Garcia.
But on Christmas morning, Garcia phoned the Bronx car service, New Laconia Radio Dispatcher, and was initially told the cabby she had ridden with wasn’t available.
A dispatcher later called back with good news: The gifts were still in the cab, and they’d be available for pickup at the dispatch office.
The connection was made by New Laconia driver and Bronx resident Moustapha Bah, who operates a cab with his brother.
Bah, 37, originally from Guinea, planned to work on Christmas Day, and was waiting to trade off the car with his brother that morning.
“I had some cardboard that I wanted to put into my trunk,” Bah told The Post. “I told [my brother] to open the trunk.”
That’s when they realized it was full of holiday gifts — “four different bags of wrapped presents,” Bah said.
His brother immediately put two and two together.
“He realized it was the customer and he remembered where he dropped them,” Bah said.
Bah took everything to the dispatcher, where he got to meet Garcia and her ecstatic granddaughters who had almost missed out on their gifts.
“I’m very proud of them,” New Laconia dispatch manager Pedro Garcia said of the sibling Samaritans. “They’re both good drivers.”
Additional reporting by David Green