McClatchy Washington Bureau

Print This Article

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. -- A 17-year-old grocery bagger was ready to wash his hands in the bathroom at the Federal Way supermarket where he works when he saw a brown canvas money bag on the floor. Moisei Baraniuc was curious. He opened it and saw envelopes filled with money – “a pretty thick stack.”

Thick enough to add up to $10,000.

Stuffed with 50- and hundred-dollar bills, the bag contained the life savings of a Vancouver, Wash., man who accidentally left it in the men’s bathroom at Top Food & Drug on Nov. 13.

Baraniuc, a senior at Todd Beamer High School in Federal Way, didn’t know the whole story at the time. He just put the bag on the counter and washed his hands while he thought.

“The first thing that went through my mind was keeping it,” he said.

And then the Ukrainian immigrant remembered what his father, Vitalie Baraniuc, always says at dinner at the family’s home in Pacific.

“My dad is always telling us in this life you’ve got to work for yourself,” said Baraniuc, who goes by the nickname Moses. “If you take what doesn’t belong to you, it will catch up to you.”

Read the complete story at thenewstribune.com