Seattle Airport Cabbie Returns Wallet With $5,950 In It

Lynnwood cabbie Vinod Mago could have pocketed the $5,950 he found in his taxi and made a beeline for the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

After all, the 55-year-old drives a Seattle-Tacoma International Taxi Association cab and ferries passengers to and from the airport.

And fibs are easy to tell.

But on Feb. 1, he returned a lost black wallet - stuffed with $50 and $100 bills - that a passenger had left in the back of cab No. 33.

"If money doesn't belong to me, I don't keep it," Mago said. "I know God is watching everybody, every second."

Mago had just started his morning shift that Thursday when friend Stanley Lal, an airport taxi coordinator, called to say that a distraught man named Peter was looking for his wallet.

Mago pulled his white-and-green cab over in Bellevue and spotted the wallet in the backseat near the right-side passenger door.

He made a beeline for the airport, where Peter, hearing that the wallet was found, had hugged Lal four or five times in joy. "He said, `That's my life savings!'" Lal recalled.

The man's honesty mirrors a New York City taxi driver who recently returned a black bag containing 31 diamond rings to a passenger. Earlier, she had given Osman Chowdhury a 30-cent tip on an $11 ride.

The woman, who said she was a jeweler, left the valuables in the cab's trunk and had offered a $100 reward. Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh, took it to cover fares he lost while he was tracking the woman down.

"I'm not going to take someone else's money or property to make me rich. I don't want it that way," the New York cabbie said.

Peter, the Seattle passenger, apparently was going to buy a car with his cash.

When Mago returned the wallet, he told Peter to count the bills.

"He said, `I don't need to count the money. It's such a huge amount. I believe you,'" Mago said.

Mago, who moved to the United States from India in 1984, was glad another passenger had not taken the wallet.

"It would have been embarrassing," he said. "He would have thought I took it."

In a letter of praise to the cab association, Peter wrote: "I wish there were more people in the world like this man."

Months ago, Mago found $640 in his taxi. He returned that money, too.

"My mother always said if you're an honest person, you will always have money in your pocket," he said.

The passenger thanked Mago by giving him $100.

Mago celebrated by taking his family to dinner at the Olive Garden in Lynnwood.

Lal received $20 from the grateful passenger. "Maybe I spent it on gas for my Nissan Pathfinder," he said.

or .

News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.