Florida man praised for returning $30,000 found in Wawa bathroom to original owner

A Florida construction worker is being praised after returning $30,000 he found in a Wawa restroom to its rightful owner. The grateful owner had sold off his entire Pokémon collection to help pay for a medical procedure for his sister.

Luis Salazar told WPBF that he had stopped at a Riviera Beach Wawa earlier in May to use the restroom, where he found a fanny pack hanging on the safety railing. He said he thought the bag had belonged to the person who had used the restroom immediately before him and remembered what the person looked like.

"So, I saw it, and I grabbed it, and I tried to locate the person that was there," Salazar said. When he was unable to locate the owner, he opened the bag to look for identification and instead found thousands of dollars in cash. "My body was just numb, just seeing all this money that belonged to somebody else," he said.

Salazar told the Washington Post that he didn’t trust employees at the convenience store or the police to find the bag’s owner, so he attempted to find the owner himself.

The 24-year-old man who left the bag behind said he hadn’t realized the bag was missing until he was in Broward County. "I was like, 'Oh my God, my freaking money's gone. I'm out of all this bread. I don't know what I'm going to do." In total, the bag contained $30,023 in $100 and $50 bills, which were proceeds from the man selling off his Pokémon collectibles.

He returned to the Wawa location to look for the bag, but found it was gone. "I was like, 'Oh my God, my freaking money's gone. I'm out of all this bread. I don't know what I'm going to do.'" He added to the Washington Post, "I thought I was absolutely screwed."

He called the Riviera Police Department the day it went missing, May 3, with officers opening a grand-theft investigation and searching for the man who grabbed the bag. Surveillance camera footage recorded Salazar walking out of the restroom with the fanny pack in hand, and was seen searching the store and the parking lot for the bag’s owner, police spokesman Mike Jachles said.

Salazar was identified by police on May 7 through the van he was driving. Police asked Salazar to meet at the police station to return the bag to its owner. He said that when he went to the station, he recognized the owner’s sandals.

"So, I give him his bag. 'This is yours.' And he was crying. And he hugged me," Salazar said. The owner said, "I was just thankful to get my money back, to be completely honest."

Body camera footage captured the moment the owner realized all of the funds were accounted for. "I was pretty astonished that anybody would have done that," he said. "Think about it. That's life-changing money. People would kill for that kind of money."

Salazar said he never considered keeping the money. "$30,000 is great, but it’s not mine to keep. I like to earn my money." The owner said he even offered to buy Salazar dinner for his efforts, but Salazar declined. "I just did the right thing," he said. "I don’t need to be put on a pedestal."

The owner said, reflecting on the experience, "I guess maybe there's just more good people in the world than most people think. You never know who you'll run into, and Luis is just one of those good people."