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Upbeat Walmart employee returns $20,000 in cash to rightful owner

April 9, 2013

Bismark Mensah, a Walmart employee in Seattle, returned $20,000 in cash left in a shopping cart.

Mensah claims he is used to finding lost items in carts, but never something like this. The $20,000 was in a white envelope and had fallen out of a woman's purse while she was loading her car with bags of merchandise.

The cash belonged to Leona Wisdom, who received the cash from a finance company to pay a down payment on a house that day. Mensah was helping her take items to the car and watched her drive away as he noticed the bulging envelope of money.

"I run after them. I think somebody heard me and signaled for them to stop," he remembers.

Mensah handed Wisdom the cash as she broke down in tears. Wisdom tried to give Mensah some money as a reward but he refused to take it. She even offered to take him out to dinner. Mensah did not want a reward for doing the right thing and it never crossed his mind to keep the money for himself.

"My conscience wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t even drive home if I did that," he said.

Mensah is an immigrant from Ghana, known for his upbeat personality and passion for going out of his way to help customers.

Wisdom says she's a caregiver who works with people who are disabled.

Photo: ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES | Source: Seattle Times