The Greenwich resident was driving north on Route 22 just after 8:30 a.m. on her way to work Tuesday when an armored car drove up behind her and passed her near Salem Farm Supply.
As the vehicle hit a bump, a box fell from the back of it, then a clear plastic bag.
From the bag flew money, bills blowing free in the car's wake.
She pulled her car over and stopped to pick up the bills.
Then she called 911 and reported the truck's loss to police.
State Police praised her later Tuesday for what one trooper called an "unbelievable" act of honesty.
There were no witnesses to the truck's loss, and the drivers didn't realize the money had fallen from the truck until State Police tracked them down later Tuesday morning at Price Chopper in Granville, where they were making a pickup.
It likely would have been hours before anyone noticed the money missing, and by then it would have been very difficult to figure out where and how it was lost, Trooper Kevin Saunders said.
In all, $11,000 in singles and an unspecified amount of change tumbled from the truck.
"It's an unbelievable act of honesty," Saunders said.
Police located the truck minutes away after Wesner's report.
Saunders said Wesner noted that the truck was a Brinks vehicle, and Washington County dispatchers contacted the company and learned the truck was headed to Price Chopper.
The Brinks truck's drivers did not know the money had been lost when State Police located them.
As troopers tried to figure out what happened after Wesner's 911 call, officers fanned out up and down Route 22 looking for other lost money. None was found, though.
Saunders said Brinks officials theorized there was a problem with the truck door's locks that allowed one to open. The back doors were locked when troopers located the drivers at Price Chopper, but the company believes they secured themselves as the truck drove north after the loss.
"They (Brinks) had a supervisor respond and he was not too happy," the trooper said.
Wesner, the director of Pember Library and Museum in Granville, said she did not see the truck's doors open, and believed the money fell off the truck's back bumper.
She said many of the people to whom she told the story said they would have had a hard time doing what she did.
"It's funny the reaction I'm getting from people. Most of them said 'I would have kept it,'" she said. "But I couldn't keep it. It wasn't my money."
Wesner said she had gotten a call from Brinks later Tuesday, but had not been offered a reward or any other gratuity for her good deed.
"They told me corporate will be calling me," she said.
A man who answered the phone at the Brinks regional office in Menands later Tuesday said the company had no comment on the matter.
source-poststar.com