ELLSWORTH, Maine — If not for the honesty of a customer, someone looking for a candy bar at a local convenience store earlier this week might have found a different kind of “PayDay,” in the form of $7,900.
That’s how much cash someone found Tuesday morning in the candy rack of the Circle K on High Street, according to Ellsworth police Detective Dotty Small.
Small said a customer found the cash wadded together in the candy rack by a cash register and gave it to a clerk. The clerk then called the police, who came to pick up the money.
A few hours later, a man who had been in the store before the money was found called the store to ask if anyone might have turned it in. He was directed to police and then was able to accurately describe the denominations and the color of the elastic band that held the bills together.
“He described it to a ‘T,’” Small said.
She added he had just been paid for a roofing job when he went into the store to buy a cigarette lighter.
“He thinks it fell out of his pocket,” she said of the currency.
Small said police are not releasing the man’s name. According to the Ellsworth American newspaper, the woman who found the money in the candy rack has not been identified.
Small said it is fairly common for customers to accidentally drop items into the candy racks by cash registers at Circle K and other convenience stores.
“We’re forever getting lost items there,” Small said. “We can get three or four [driver’s] licenses or debit cards a week. Every time [Officer] Gil [Jameson] goes in, they give him a big stack.”
