" Now, Tom had seemed like a decent guy when we watched him during track practice, and seeing that sign on the bulletin board had given us a clue that he had a good heart, too. But it was almost as if he knew we needed more convincing. And by the time we lost him—just a few streets away from our block—we were positive he couldn’t be the same guy who had robbed Speedy Jack’s. In fact, he turned out to be the nicest, most polite, most civic-minded boy I’ve ever seen. Here’s what we saw him do:
He spotted a dog wandering into the road and stopped to coax it onto the sidewalk.
He helped a little old lady across the street (really!), holding his hand up to stop traffic for her.
He hopped off his skateboard and bent down to tie a child’s shoe. The mother (whose arms were full of groceries) looked like she wanted to hug him.
He gave directions to a motorist, nodding politely at all her questions.
He picked up litter from the sidewalk and threw it into a trash can.
He stopped to admire a baby in its carriage.
It was while he was cooing over the baby that Sunny gave me a disgusted look. “Are we wasting our time, or what?” she asked.
I giggled. “Somehow I find it hard to believe he could swat a fly, much less hold up a store.”
When Tom finished with the baby, he straightened up, stepped back onto his skateboard, and zipped around a corner. We let him go. Sunny sighed. “He’ll make some girl a fine husband one day,” she said, with a straight face.
Then we cracked up.
We were still laughing about it a half hour later, when Jill and Maggie showed up at Sunny’s for our party-planning session. We told them all about “Saint Tom,” as we’d begun to call him. "

― Ann M. Martin , Dawn and the Halloween Mystery (Baby-Sitters Club Mystery, #17)