Walmart worker honoured with award after returning $20,000 found in cart

Bismark Mensah, 32, didn't think twice about returning the $20,000 he found in a Walmart parking lot last October.

"My conscience wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t even drive home if I did that," he told the Seattle Times.

The recent Ghanian immigrant was working part-time as a "courtesy associate" at a Federal Way, Washington, Walmart, making only about $640 every two weeks, when he spotted a white envelope sitting in a cart. It stuffed with cash: $20,000.

He immediately knew who it belonged to, as he had just been helping a couple load their merchandise into their vehicle's trunk. The envelope had fallen out of the woman's purse.

The couple was driving away when he found the small fortune.

So he flagged them down.

"I run after them. I think somebody heard me and signaled for them to stop," he told the Seattle Times. "She was like, 'Wow!' Tears are coming out. She took some money and tried to reward me. I said, 'No, no. I’m all right.'"

The money belonged to Leona Wisdom and Gary Elton, a couple who were returning home from a meeting a finance company when they stopped at Walmart to do some shopping.

The cash was their downpayment for a home they were buying with cash so they wouldn't have to wait for their cheque to clear.

Mensah was honoured for his good deed by being named a winner of Walmart's annual "Integrity in Action" award.

Mensah's store manager, Jeremy Smith, told the Seattle Times that customers regularly call the store to praise Mensah.

"In the parking lot, people chat, tell you their problems, you see that a person is not happy. I tell them, 'God is in control. Everything is OK,'" said Mensah.

Since returning the $20,000, Mensah has been promoted to full-time, a position that includes benefits.

In October, a McDonald's employee in Lethbridge, Alberta, turned in an envelope full of cash left next to the till.

"All I kept thinking was somebody somewhere was having a very bad day," Chelsey Walker told the Calgary Sun. "That could be somebody's rent or damage deposit or both, somebody needed that money for something. It's definitely a lot of money, somebody would have had a great week, or a trip to Las Vegas or Mexico."

That same month, a Las Vegas cab driver returned a laptop case filled with $221,510 in cash. He was tipped $2,000 by the grateful owner.

Moral of the story: Do the right thing.

Second moral of the story: Don't carry around huge amounts of cash if you don't have to. These good-news stories could have become lessons in "how to lose all your money."