“McDonald's Manager Rewarded For Honesty”

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 07:49 PM PDT

Posted By - Kevin Rowson

Last Updated On: 9/1/2010 10:30:56 PM

FORSYTH, GA -- How many times did your parents tell you when you were young that honesty is the best policy? That's what a manager at a McDonald's restaurant in Forsyth found out when she returned something that didn't belong to her.

Lizzie Head has worked at the restaurant for twenty years. She didn't get to be one of the top managers by being dishonest. Many people would have been tempted by what she found on July 4th.

A woman left her purse in the ladies room. When Head found it she looked inside for identification. What she saw took her by surprise. "I just couldn't believe what I saw," she said. There was an envelope filled with money inside the purse. "It was too much money for me to be counting at that time," Head said.

Head said she called her supervisor and then the Forsyth Police Department. She didn't even want to count the money. "It was a lot of money," she said. "It looked like it had just come from the bank and it was in bundles of a thousand."

When the police arrived, they counted the money with her. There was $8,200 in cash. "It was actually commendable that someone would return that large sum of money and not think twice about it," Officer LaShawn Linton said.

Officer Linton said the only identification in the purse was an expired registration. It took them a month to find the owner. The purse belonged to an elderly woman from Mt. Orab, Ohio. "She was ecstatic," said Officer Linton.

Last week police received a letter from the woman addressed to Lizzie Head. There was a personal check inside for $1,000 made out to Head. The woman wrote: "Thank you for returning my money. I was living on that money since my husband died in 2008. I wanted to take my sister to Florida for a break."

The woman and her sister stopped at the McDonalds for lunch on their way to Florida on July 4th. The restaurant is just off I-75 at Exit 187. She didn't have any idea where she lost her purse.

"I wish I could afford more to thank you but this amount will have to do," the letter said. "I really felt kind of bad taking it since she had that little sad note," Head said.

Head said she didn't think what she did was a big deal until word spread throughout Forsyth. People kept coming by the restaurant asking her about the purse. "I'm glad she got it," Head said. "That's the only thing I really was concerned about, that she got it."

Head said she used the reward money to buy much needed new tires for her car. "It came right at a good time," she said.

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