He returned missing $20,000: Walmart worker wins "Intergrity in Action Award"

An upbeat immigrant from Ghana, known for his cheerful helping of customers at the Walmart in Federal Way, is being honored by the retail giant for his quick work in returning an envelope stuffed with cash to the customers who had accidentally left it in a shopping cart.

It was in the early afternoon of a mid-October 2012 day that Bismark Mensah was collecting carts outside a Walmart in Federal Way, a part-time job for which he earned $9.05 an hour as a “courtesy associate.”

He was used to finding stuff in carts that customers had somehow forgotten — keys, credit cards, wallets. And he turned them in to customer service.

But this particular item stood out. It was a white envelope with a clear window in the middle, bulging with what was inside, a lot of cash. Around $20,000, it turned out.

Because of what he did that afternoon, Mensah now is in possession of a plaque that names him the winner of the retail giant’s national 2013 “Integrity in Action Award.”

Mensah is 32 and he remembers the exact date — Feb. 8, 2012 — on which he arrived in the U. S. of A., at JFK International Airport, from Ghana.

He has a photo of that occasion: standing in an airport parking lot, wearing a cap and scarf in the Ghanaian national colors of red, gold and green, an optimistic smile on his face.

He has dreams; you know, the perennial ones that immigrants through generations, and from countries all over the world, have told and still tell. They don’t mind sounding naive about America being the land of opportunity.

For Mensah that meant get a job, go to college, study business administration, eventually return to Ghana to expand the five little shops that his mom, Irene, had started from her work as a seamstress.

But about that $20,000.

It belonged to Leona Wisdom and Gary Elton, a couple from Black Diamond.

The wife says they were returning home from getting the money at a finance company when they stopped off to shop at the Walmart at South 345th Street and 16th Avenue South.

Wisdom says she’s a caregiver who works with people who are disabled, and says the cash was for a down payment on a house the couple was buying on a short sale. They didn’t get the money as a check, Wisdom says, because they didn’t want to wait days for it to clear.

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