Many Say They Would Have Kept Bag of Loot

It’s not every day $203,000 falls off a truck. Literally. Or that a poor man finds the money, anguishes over what to do, then gives it all back.

So it makes sense that people were putting themselves in the shoes of Ascension Franco Gonzales on Wednesday, the day after the dishwasher from Hidalgo, Mexico, returned a large bag of cash he found on a street in downtown Los Angeles.

Some called Gonzales crazy for returning money that dropped from the back of an armored truck. Others, even a scholar of ethics, said his actions were only slightly less than saintly.

But most everyone seemed to have an opinion. On talk radio. In restaurants. And in Sacramento, where the lieutenant governor and a state assemblyman were trying to track down 22-year-old Gonzales, to honor him for his honesty.

The young man who lives in South Los Angeles said he wanted only to get back to his life. He was not basking in his 15 minutes of fame; he was shunning it.

The morning after he returned the cash, he got up, got dressed and headed off to work. To those who still questioned his decision to return the money, he had one response: “I feel it was right. This money wasn’t mine. It wasn’t for me.”

An intrigued public, however, seemed unwilling to let the story go, still fascinated by a poor man’s honesty or, to some, foolishness. This was a lottery with a moral twist, a conundrum that allowed each individual to measure their own moral mettle. And because the opportunity was so random, because Ascension Franco Gonzales, by all accounts, could have been anybody, it seemed to only spur people to offer their opinions.

“I don’t know,” said Rocio Cruz, a 24-year-old mother of four, including a 2-week-old, sitting in a restaurant near where Gonzales works. “I could just imagine what I could do with all that money. . . . I still have to go school shopping.”

Then she added: “But I probably would have given it back because it could have been marked.”

At Chabelita’s Tacos, on the corner of Western Avenue and 20th Street, not everybody considered returning the money the right thing to do.

Reyna Hernandez, who works at a store in downtown Los Angeles, and Carlos Rodriguez would have put the money to use.

“I wouldn’t have turned it in,” said Hernandez, a single mother of three teenage girls. “I would have started a business.”

Rodriguez, a taxi driver, would have purchased a fleet of taxis. For the two, the moral issue was nonexistent. They didn’t know the owners and the rich never remember the poor, they said. So taking the money would have only been just.

A few tables away, David Widom, a 33-year-old social worker, did not have to think long before answering.

“I think I would have turned it in,” Widom said. “It’s the honorable thing to do.”

The fact that Gonzales did not keep the money, even though he may have needed it, won him and his parents praise.

“He could have ‘boned out’ [left] with the money,” said Carlos Moreno, as assistant plant manager with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

On a porch not far from the restaurant, the verdict was just as mixed.

“I’d be truthful and do the righteous thing,” said John Shell, a janitor. “I wouldn’t let the temptation get me. I would resist.”

But Johnny Shabazz was convinced Gonzales had done the wrong thing. “He’s crazy--the man’s as crazy as a Betsy bug,” Shabazz said.

The incident that pushed Gonzales into the public eye began Monday evening. Gonzales was sitting at a bus stop at Grand Avenue and 7th Street when an armored truck drove by. The doors of the truck flew open and out fell a clear plastic bag containing $203,000.

Gonzales scooped up the bag, and fearing for his life, hid it. That night, he thought about it.

The decision, finally, was equal parts conscience and practicality. He knew what the moral thing to do was. Gonzales spoke of the espinita--or prick of conscience--that gave him pause as he considered his options.

But the risk of being arrested, assaulted or killed over the loot also weighed heavily on him.

If he ever managed to get the money out of the United States, he would have to “change the money a little bit at a time in all the states of Mexico” to avoid suspicion. And he wondered whether the bills were “marked” or “in sequence” to catch potential thieves.

Then he thought about how the money could help his family. With it he could build a home for his parents even nicer than the one he dreamed of when he first came to the U.S.

“But even if I wanted to help my family, it would just cause more problems,” he said. “If I took a risk, it could go really bad. I’d gone a year without even a ticket, I didn’t want to begin now.”

The next morning, he turned the money in to police and in interviews said his Catholic upbringing helped him make the decision.

Mariette Hovy-van Wensveen, an associate professor of theology and Christian ethics at Loyola Marymount University, said Gonzales’ struggle over what to do with the money does not detract from his moral stand.

“Just to sleep on it and debate it with friends, that’s a very responsible way of making an ethical decision,” she said.

It shows that a person isn’t just an automaton, she said. “Under the circumstances, just giving it back without thinking about it may have been irresponsible,” she said.

Besides, there are numerous examples in which saints, figuratively speaking, “slept on it” before doing the moral thing, Hovy-van Wensveen said.

“If you consider some of the saints, and how they got converted,” the scholar said, “it was not a flash in the night kind of thing.”

Authorities said Gonzales should have no reason for concern--either about receiving a reward, or having his illegal status exposed to immigration officials.

A detective with the Los Angeles Police Department said it “appears there won’t be any problem” with the armored car company agreeing to pay the reward. But the payment could be slightly complicated by Gonzales’ lack of identification papers, the investigator said.

An official for the Immigration and Nationalization Service, meanwhile, said Gonzales should not be concerned that his sudden acclaim will lead agents to deport him.

“Our biggest priority is always on crimes, criminals, smuggling schemes,” said Jane Arellano, acting Los Angeles district director for the INS. “We generally don’t focus on an individual like [Gonzales].”

From the start, Gonzales has said he wanted to forget about the incident. He told police he didn’t want any media attention and that he just wanted to go home.

Few of the swirling opinions matter to him.

“My parents would approve of what I did, I think,” he said. “They would say, ‘You did the right thing.’ That’s how they raised me.”