DAMARISCOTTA, Maine — A passer-by spotted a lost bank deposit bag containing $550 in cash and facilitated the bag’s return to its rightful owner in Damariscotta late last month.
Stuart Mason of Bristol, proprietor of the Pemaquid Beach snack bar, headed into a Hannaford supermarket the morning of June 26 and stopped to talk with an acquaintance. Mason said he set the deposit bag on the roof of the other man’s car.
He was leaning in the window when the man spotted his wife leaving the store and the men parted ways. Not until Mason couldn’t pay for his groceries at the register did he realize he had left the deposit bag on the car.
The bag contained $550 in cash, Mason’s credit card and debit card, and two sets of keys to his brother’s beloved 2006 Dodge Charger. The keys have microchips and would cost $800 each to replace, Mason said.
Mason called his friend, who said he had driven to the Laundromat on Main Street and to Newcastle Chrysler. Mason traced and retraced the route, but could not find the bag and did not think anyone would return it.
Samuel Belknap III, 33, is a native of Damariscotta. He goes to school in Orono but is spending the summer with family in Damariscotta.
Belknap and his wife had their second child at LincolnHealth – Miles Campus in Damariscotta the day before Mason lost the deposit bag. Belknap was headed out to bring breakfast to his wife the next morning when he saw the bank bag in the middle of Main Street.
He parked at Mr. Mike’s and stopped traffic to run out and pick up the bag. He opened it upon returning to his car and realized “someone was going to have a pretty bad day if they didn’t get this back,” Belknap said.
Belknap said it never occurred to him to keep the money.
“I just thought of what I would be doing if I had lost something like this, so I did what I could to make sure it found its way home,” he said. He immediately drove to the Damariscotta Police Department and turned it in.
Mason, meanwhile, did not expect to see the bag again, but decided to report it missing at the Police Department. He described the items in the bag to the department’s administrative assistant, Joanna Kenefick, and to his great surprise, she handed it to him.
“She was so nice,” Mason said. “I said, ‘I just want to hug you.’”
“It’s just nice to see that some people still do the right thing,” Kenefick said.
Mason also got Belknap’s phone number. He called Belknap at the hospital and said he wanted to meet him. He gave him a $100 reward, which Belknap initially refused, saying he was just “doing what I thought was right.”
“I said, ‘I insist,’ and I said, ‘Put it toward your son’s college fund and please make sure your son knows that honesty pays,” Mason said.
While Mason was glad to receive his property back, “it wasn’t about the money in the bag,” he said. “It was the honesty that I cared about — that there are good people left.”
“It was a beautiful thing,” Mason said.