Clean conscience worth more than a bag of cash
MELBOURNE, Fla. – Robby Robinson discovered a bank bag full of money sitting in the middle of busy Hopkins Avenue in Titusville.
He didn’t pocket the cash. He didn’t do anything illegal with it, and he certainly wasn’t arrested. Best of all, he didn’t ignore it.
Robinson decided in that very moment he was going to do the right thing.
He picked up the bag, discovered it was full of cash and saw it still had a bank receipt in it.
He drove to TD Bank, which had its label on the receipt, turned the money in and explained what happened.
“I said: ‘Hey I found this bank bag. It belongs to somebody, and there’s a receipt in there,’ ” said Robinson, who owns a termite and pest control business. The bank employee “was elated somebody would do this.”
Then he took to social media, where he posted a photo of the bag on a popular Titusville Facebook group, the bank attendant’s name to whom he had given the cash and wished everyone a “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Appropriately enough, the love began to pour in.
“Amazing.”
“This is the best gift anyone could give today.”
“Glad to know there are still honest people out there.”
Dozens of comments were left from near and far praising Robinson.
More than 1,000 likes were clicked on the post.
Perhaps the most special tribute was this one:
“Just to throw this into the mix of all this positive commotion from everyone and especially the ones saying that you made someone’s day,” Robbie Lewis wrote. “I AM THAT SOMEONE! I thank you Robby for your actions. I really do appreciate it. I was a wreck over this even with my boss telling me not to worry about it.”
Not only was the bank bag returned where it belonged, but the man who lost it was connected with the person who showed the community that there are still good people out there — lots of them — and kindness persists in an often chaotic world: On that same day, 17 people were killed in a mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., a few hours’ drive south.
People latched on to what Robinson did, even in a group in which, members often gripe about bad drivers, bad experiences or less-than-perfect happenings in the community.
Nearly 200 people took time out of their day to give Robinson a figurative pat on the back.
Robinson said he wasn’t expecting praise when he posted about his find to the Facebook group; he was just trying to help.
“It’s cool,” he said. “But I was just doing something we all should do.”
As for the outpouring of support, “it’s uplifting, and it shows the other side of humans. Somebody’s doing something that they should be doing.”
He said he felt God put him in the right place at the right time.