VIRGINIA BEACH — The man surprised Pamela Katrancha when he called from an unknown number with an urgent message: He had just made a bank deposit for her business.
He didn’t work for her shop, Hickory Farms, and he hadn’t been trusted with any of the business’ money. No one had that day. The caller didn’t work for Katrancha’s bank, either.
“I was just thinking: Who is this person?” she recalled.
His name is Jermaine Scott. He’s the guy who found her deposit of nearly $1,500 stuffed into and partly protruding from the wrong receptacle outside a Bank of America.
Scott was with his daughter and had stopped at the bank near Lynnhaven Mall when he noticed a piece of plastic sticking out of the deposit box. He pulled it out to see what it was and saw the money inside.
Scott told his daughter what he was going to do next.
“You do the right thing,” he told her. “Because karma is something that can come back and bite you.”
Scott looked through the bag to find who it belonged to before placing it into the right box. Then he ringed Hickory Farms and talked to Katrancha, who owns 30 of the franchises, including six in Hampton Roads.
She had thought the deposit was still pending. An employee had taken it to the bank two days earlier, on the Saturday before Christmas. Later, after figuring out what had happened, Katrancha invited Scott to visit her store in Virginia Beach, where a store manager gave him a gift basket. It never felt like enough, she said.
Katrancha, a board member of the regional Retail Alliance, then had an idea of something that might be.
She plans to pull Scott up on stage next month at the Alliance’s annual “Retailer of the Year Awards” gala. While she’s got him up there, she plans to present him with some of the money he could have had.
It will be the first time the two meet.
Have a story idea or news tip? Contact City Hall reporter Judah Taylor at [email protected] or 757-490-2750.
Never miss a headline — sign up for our free morning newsletter.
