Storybook ending.

In July 2002, when the merger of two banks in the South was underway, more than $46,000 turned up missing at a Columbus, Georgia, branch of one of the institutions.

Bank officials reported the loss to the FBI, and the money was written off on the bank's books as a loss of unknown origin. There was speculation that a bank employee may have inadvertently "deposited" it in a dumpster.

On July 23 of this year, a nearly identical quantity of cash was unearthed by a backhoe operator digging through refuse at the Pine Grove Landfill in Columbus. Instead of keeping the money, the operator, Myron Lakoduk, immediately reported the find to his division chief. When bank officials learned about it from a newspaper story, they alerted police to the likelihood that it was the money that the bank had misplaced two years earlier.

In mid-August, after investigators confirmed that the money did indeed belong to the bank (among other evidence, remnants of bank wrappers were mixed with the currency), it was returned to its rightful owner. The August 17 Ledger-Enquirer reported that the bank not only "plans to give an undisclosed cash reward" to Lakoduk, but will also "make a donation to an unnamed Columbus non-profit organization."

Columbus Public Services Director Rufus Riggs told the Ledger-Enquirer that Lakoduk's commendable display of character provided a "storybook ending" of the sort "you teach to youngsters when you talk about integrity and honesty."