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Hey, $65,000 in cash! ... Now what?

A Pinellas worker didn't hesitate when she found a money bag. (She turned it in, in case you had to ask.)

By MELANIE AVE, Times Staff Writer
Published October 5, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Debbie Cole, 53, of Largo found a bag filled with $65,000 cash at Pinellas County's Solid Waste Operations facility after it fell off an armored Loomis truck. [Handout]

ST. PETERSBURG - What would you do if you found a bag filled with $65,000, and no one saw you pick it up?

Debbie Cole, 53, found herself in that situation just before 7 on Thursday morning. As she walked to the break room at Pinellas County's Solid Waste Operations, she looked in the roadway where the trucks drive through to weigh their garbage and saw a clear plastic bag with a red stripe at the top.

When the four-year county employee picked it up, she saw piles of Benjamin Franklins and Ulysses S. Grants staring back at her. One wrapper said $10,000.

That was just one stack.

She thought: Oh my gosh. It's full of money.

Cole didn't hesitate. Within seconds, she called her supervisor, who called her supervisor, who called the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies picked up the bag and traced it to Loomis, a money handling business based in Houston. The money had fallen from an armored car that had passed through about 30 minutes before Cole found the bag, which may have belonged to Regions Bank in Clearwater.

It had been run over several times.

It's unclear how the bag "inadvertently" fell from the truck, said Mark Clark, a Loomis spokesman, who added that an investigation is under way.

"We totally appreciate her being a good Samaritan," he said of Cole, who makes $17 an hour. "This isn't something that happens. It's embarrassing, quite frankly."

Hours after the discovery, around the solid waste administration building, Cole's supervisors said they were not surprised that she turned over the money.

"She's just a straight up, honest person," said Bob Hauser, director of solid waste. "I wouldn't expect anything else of her."

"It just shows what a good employee, no, what a good person, she is," said her supervisor, Janice Burns. "She was more concerned for the driver. She was saying, 'I just feel bad about the driver.'"

Since Cole is a government employee, Hauser said he can't give her a raise or a bonus for doing the right thing.

But he will make sure she gets another kind of reward. He's thinking some extra time off might be in order.

Cole, who grew up in Long Island and lives in Largo, said she was raised to be honest. She raised her four daughters to be the same way.

If a clerk gives her too much change when she shops, she said she gives it back.

"I can't help it," Cole said. "I feel bad."

The bag contained about what Cole makes in a two year period as a scales shift leader. So didn't she, just for a minute, think about keeping it?

"Everyone keeps asking me that," Cole said. "To be honest, no. It didn't even cross my mind."

Melanie Ave can be reached at mave@sptimes.com or 727 893-8813.

[Last modified October 5, 2007, 00:16:04]