When Robert Sneed found $2,000 at a store last month, he didn’t hesitate to do the right thing. The young Army veteran was out picking up groceries at an Ohio Walmart with his toddler daughter one evening when he found the cash in a shopping cart.
Arriving at the store in Gallipolis, Mr. Sneed pulled a cart from the corral. Then, looking down, the dad from Marietta spotted what at first looked like a piece of paper.
“I thought it was a shopping list,” Mr. Sneed, 31, told The Epoch Times. “My daughter grabbed it and I was about to throw it away, but I realized it was actually an envelope. Then, I saw a banking receipt.”
Also inside was the hefty wad of cash.
Not wishing to rifle through someone else’s property, yet conscious of the valuable contents, Mr. Sneed’s first reaction was to take it to Ohio Valley Bank located inside Walmart where the owner had made the withdrawal. However, as it was around 7 p.m. and the bank was closed, he went to find a store worker instead.
“Hey, come with me and find a manager,” he told a Walmart door greeter. He asked Mr. Sneed what the problem was.
“I said, there’s no problem. But I didn’t want to just give the money to one person; I wanted to make sure I gave it to a manager,” the veteran told the newspaper.
“This is a long shot,” he wrote. “But if someone lost 2K in an envelope at Walmart in Gallipolis and just pulled it out from OVB I turned it in to Gallipolis Walmart ... there’s a banking receipt so you'll need to verify it came from your account ... this was found at 7 p.m. I’m sure it came from the OVB inside Walmart. I don’t live close by and the bank was closed, or I would’ve turned it in there first.”
Mr. Sneed said that while he’s never lost anything of great value before, himself, he understands how upset the individual who lost the money must have been.
“I know if I was in the same boat, I would have just bid $2,000 goodbye because I’d doubt I'd ever see it again,” he said.
He added that he “didn’t give it a whole lot of thought” after making the Facebook post since he was confident the money would be returned via the store manager. But around a week later, Mr. Sneed was told his post was shared about a thousand times with many positive comments.
Originally from West Virginia, Mr. Sneed said it was “probably my upbringing” that influenced his honest actions that day.
“At the time, I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he said. “I just thought that was natural for someone to do; it was my first instinct.”
