3 Honest Women Get Free Meal for Returning $1,500

The three young women carefully chose the cheapest thing on the menu at El Bracero Restaurant in Reseda Thursday night.

Then, they walked out the door and found a satchel--filled with $1,500--sitting on a bench.

Amy Cumberworth, 19, is so broke she recently borrowed $650 from her parents to pay the rent and register her car. Shannon Snyder, 21, lost her job as a jewelry saleswoman two weeks ago when the company folded. And Shannon’s sister, Shawn Snyder, 20, isn’t exactly rolling in cash from her job at a Wherehouse records store.

Dreams Dashed

Visions of shopping sprees, travel and rented limousines flashed through their minds as they dug through thick wads of bills stuffed into a zippered shaving kit.

But then, digging deeper, they found receipts for El Bracero. Dutifully they returned the cash to the restaurant’s manager.

They say virtue is its own reward. Even so, the women were miffed with the thanks they got: the offer of a free meal at El Bracero.

A Free Dinner

“The waitress came over, and she looked at us like we had stolen it. She goes, ‘Oh thanks,’ really nonchalant. Then she said, ‘You can come in for a free dinner,’ “Shawn Snyder said. “If somebody had given me money like that, I would have bowed. She acted like it was her toothbrush or something.”

“A free dinner? I was thinking, ‘We just gave you thousands of dollars back. We could have just walked away with it, and nobody would have known,” said Cumberworth, a $3.75-an-hour saleswoman at a Fallbrook Mall coffee store. “I’m just thinking I could have been in the Bahamas today.”

But still, they said Friday, they would do the same thing again--sort of.

The three stood in the parking lot outside the restaurant, a small one-story building at 7228 Canby St. decorated with paintings of Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and flamenco dancers.

The occupants of passing pickup trucks stared at the three, each bedecked with bracelets, earrings and necklaces with insignia ranging from peace signs to skulls and bats. Shannon Snyder’s eyes were daubed hot pink. Her lips, the same color, were outlined with purple.

“We’re not what you expected, are we?” Cumberworth asked, smiling.

“We wanted to keep the money, of course. Anybody would want to keep it,” said Cumberworth, who lives in Canoga Park.

But, she added, “A couple weeks ago, I had gotten my wallet stolen at a concert. I eventually found my wallet in a trash can with no money. That was terrible and that was only $30. So I knew how bad it feels to lose money.”

Restaurant manager Martha Arellano said she doesn’t know how the money, destined for deposit in the bank Friday, ended up on the bench. But she is glad that the three came along.

“They are very honest girls. I’m very happy, very thankful,” Arellano said Friday. She said the offer of a free meal still stands.

The three said their first instinct when they found the money was to run. “We thought it was money from a drug deal. Or, numbers money,” Cumberworth said. “We started running, thinking somebody was going to start shooting at us. We were really scared. We didn’t know what to do with it.”

They returned to the BeBop Record Store, where earlier they had watched a group called “The House of Freaks” perform for a rock video. “Then we found all these receipts and realized it was a bank drop for this restaurant we had been to,” Cumberworth said.

“We thought, we can walk away with it,” Cumberworth said. “But we decided the right thing to do would be to return it. Plus we were scared. What if we ever got caught?”

“We felt how guilty we would feel taking somebody else’s money and spending it,” said Shawn Snyder, who lives with her sister and father in Van Nuys. Shawn and Shannon’s mother died of cancer in February, she said.

“We’d probably do the same thing the next time,” Shawn Snyder said, of her decision to return the money. Shannon Snyder nodded.

Cumberworth said she would return the money, too. But, she added, “Next time, I’d probably keep $50.”