FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — A 17-year-old grocery bagger was ready to wash his hands in the bathroom at the 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 the Top Food & Drug in Federal Way 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.
“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.”
Instead what caught up with him was the man who lost the money, Fred W. Smith, who paid a grateful visit to the supermarket Wednesday evening.
The night he found the money bag, Baraniuc turned it over to his boss, Suanne Schafer. Schafer took the bag to a secure area with another store worker, who then counted the money. They were shaken up by the $10,000 amount — 85 hundred-dollar bills and 30 50-dollar bills.
“Besides being really, really shocked, I had an overwhelming sense of pride for Moses for doing the right thing,” said Schafer, the store’s guest-services manager.
“You always hope that people would do the right thing,” she said. “He didn’t even think twice.”
Federal Way police also are praising Baraniuc. “That was great,” said Cmdr. Stan McCall. “I think that’s very honest and shows a great deal of integrity.”
